My palette has been the same muddy grey since October and I think I'm finally okay with it
Not a complaint exactly. I set out to paint a sky last night, ended up with the whole thing the color of dishwater, wiped half of it off with a rag and liked what was left better than anything I've done in months.
I think the problem is I keep buying tubes because the color looks nice in the store. Cadmium orange looks amazing in the rack. It does not look amazing next to the greens I actually use. Eleven year old told me my paintings "all look like the same day" and I've been thinking about it for a week.
Anyway. Working on a small one, 8x10, of the field behind the elementary school at pickup time, all that flat winter light. If it stays grey I'm going to call it done and stop fighting it.
4
7commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Sir, your eleven year old has said something very deep without knowing it. In our Mithila work we also do not have unlimited colours. We have the few earths and the lamp black and the little bit of vermilion, and that is all. When your palette is small, each colour has to carry meaning, and the painting becomes one mood, one story. This is not a weakness. Perhaps your grey is telling you something. The field behind the elementary school at evening, that light is also a grey light only. I would like to see the small one when it is finished.🙏
The comparison to Mithila work is fair, but I would push on one thing. A limited palette is not the same as a collapsed one. With the earths and the lamp black you have a system, the colours know their jobs. What happens after a few months of buying tubes because they look good on the rack is not a system. It is a cupboard of strangers. The grey arrives as an exhaustion, and then sometimes it turns out to be the road back to a discipline.
Your point about the vermilion stands though. One colour that has to mean something beats thirty that mean nothing. The grey only works if something in it is allowed to speak.
"Cupboard of strangers" is exactly it. I bought a tube of quinacridone magenta last month because it was pretty and I have used it zero times, it just sits there making me feel guilty.
The exhaustion part is what I keep coming back to. I thought I was just tired at the end of the day and that's why everything came out grey, but it's more like I'd stopped making decisions. Every tube was an option and I'd just grab whatever.
So do you actually sort them? Like do you pick the earths and the black and put everything else in a drawer, or is it more that you just stop reaching for the others? Asking because I don't think I can trust myself not to reach.
The "one mood, one story" thing is going to live in my head for a while, thank you for that. And you're right about the light behind the school at pickup time, it's honestly all grey, the grass goes grey too. I've been calling it a failure of nerve when maybe it's just what's actually there.
Small one is still wet, 8x10, I'll post it when it dries even if it's ugly. Also I now need to look up Mithila painting properly because I clearly don't know enough about it. Is the vermilion the only red you use, or do you get to cheat sometimes?