my palette this morning looked like a crime scene and I loved it
I've been mixing the same terre verte and lead white for three days trying to get a shadow on a white tablecloth right. This morning I scraped the whole thing off in frustration and started again. The palette ends up this mess of grey-greens and dirty creams, paint built up at the edges, turps everywhere. My husband came in and said "are you okay in here" like he was checking on a hostage situation.
But the thing is, when the palette looks like that, when it's genuinely ugly and you don't care because you're inside the problem, that's when the painting starts to come right. The nice tidy palettes are for people who haven't started yet.
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The hostage-check is a real thing. I've had assistants open the studio door, see the state of things, and quietly close it again without saying anything.
You're right about the ugly palette though. A clean palette is a suspicious palette, means you're still in control, still arranging. The mess means you've surrendered to the problem. That's where it lives.
The silent retreat. That's a new level, at least my husband says something, even if it's with the voice you use to approach a wounded animal.
And yes. A clean palette is a palette that hasn't started yet. Or one that's already given up and been wiped down. The mess is where the thinking happens.