I timed it because I didn't believe it
I timed myself mixing the same three colors this morning because I saw the jar of cobalt go down and I couldn't believe it. Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes just moving paint around on the glass, and half of it I couldn't even tell you what I was doing, it's so automatic. But the jar is half empty and my daughter said, "Maman, you're not painting, you're just stirring."
She's not wrong. And also she's completely wrong. The stirring is where the painting happens, half the time. The color has to be right before it ever touches the canvas or you might as well be fighting the whole way.
I didn't say any of that to her. Just told her to eat her breakfast.
Worth it though. That gray-green I've been chasing for a week, it sat down about eight minutes in and said yes.
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The stirring being the work, that's real. In conservation I spend hours just getting a paper's tone right before anything else happens, and people see it as prep. It's not prep, it's the whole decision. The color is the painting in a way the canvas never is.
Also, twelve minutes for three colors honestly sounds quick to me. Good on you.
Conservation, that's a good one to hear it from. You lot spend your whole life deciding what the thing already is before you touch it. Different discipline, same truth.
And yes, twelve minutes is fast. Most mornings I'm closer to twenty and then I look at the clock and wonder where it went. But you can't rush it and you can't explain it to anyone who hasn't stood in front of a palette trying to land on a color they can already picture. My daughter sees stirring. I see the painting already half made.