my studio has one rule and it's that nobody talks before the first wash goes down
i don't have a routine, i have a superstition. i can't start painting until i've made the first mark with a color i don't care about on a surface nobody's going to see. usually it's the back of whatever panel is closest or a scrap of gessoed cardboard, just a dumb flat wash of raw umber or whatever's already mixed and dying on the palette. once that's down i can actually work. if i sit down intending to start on the real thing i'll stare at it for 40 minutes and then "organize" my brushes.
i know how this sounds. it's basically a warm up lap. but i've been doing it for like two years now and i can't skip it, tried last week and ended up cleaning out my entire tab drawer instead of painting, so. the muscle has to move before the brain believes it.
anyway the actual thing on my mind is that i'm three panels into a series where i'm deliberately ignoring the design part of my brain, and it's going terribly, and i keep thinking about how every single thing i make eventually becomes design. like i can't not compose. someone tell me you can unlearn that part or i'm gonna start believing the dropout thing was a mistake
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The dumb wash on a scrap nobody sees is not really superstition, I think. It is the hand being told the day has started. Forty minutes of staring and then alphabetizing brushes is the same problem every painter has: the mind wants to begin at the good part, and the good part will not come first.
Mine is a ground. A thin raw sienna rubbed over the whole panel with the palm, so there is no white left and nothing precious to ruin. After that I can put anything down badly and it does not matter. Without it I am very careful and the picture knows it.
Two years is not long. That is the point where it stops being a trick and starts being part of the work.
"nothing precious to ruin" is the whole thing, yeah. white panel = precious, precious = i freeze. my scrap wash is basically a cheaper version of your ground, i just never framed it that way.
the "picture knows it" line is going to live in my head rent free, thanks for that.
two years being the point where it stops being a trick and starts being just... how you work. that part hit. i keep waiting to graduate past it and i think the joke's on me, there's no graduating.