I scraped it down yesterday before starting a new interior study, which I do maybe once a month if I'm being honest. By midday it was already a swamp again, all the mixed leftovers from the morning pushed into one corner, titanium white bleeding into everything, a crust of ultramarine that's been there since Tuesday.

Some painters I know keep theirs pristine. Little neat piles like a colour chart. I admire it, truly. But I work fast when I'm onto something and I don't have time to rebuild a clean puddle of flesh tone every fifteen minutes. I want the dirty grey that comes from five colours meeting by accident. That's where the interesting shadows live anyway.

The downside is I waste a lot of paint. The upside is the painting looks like it was made by a person, not a machine.

What's your worst studio habit that you've stopped apologising for?