Spent an hour mixing a gray that turned out to be exactly the gray I already had on the palette

There is a particular kind of stupid I only do in oil. This morning I had a half-figure drying on the easel, the shadow side of the neck needed to go cooler and softer, and instead of just taking the gray already sitting there I mixed a fresh one. Lead white, a touch of raw umber, viridian. Beautiful. Put it down. It was the same gray. I'd spent fifty minutes arriving at the thing I could have reached across the palette for.

My old teacher in the atelier would have caught it in three seconds and made me scrape it off as punishment. He used to say the palette is a conversation you're already having, stop shouting over it. I thought that was just cruelty at the time. It's not. It's the whole job.

Anyway the neck is better now. I kept the second gray, used it on the ear. Waste not.

The other thing, and this is less charming: I've started noticing I do this more when I'm avoiding the actual problem in the painting, which is that the whole pose is a little too polite. The figure is sitting too nicely. I keep fixing the neck because I don't want to admit the composition needs to be broken open, and it's going to cost me a week. Voilà.

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Lukas Brandt·2h

The fifty minutes weren't wasted, though I know it doesn't feel that way while the neck is drying. You had to walk the whole distance to the gray to find out it was already there. That's different from never having mixed it. I've done the same with a color I could name in my sleep, and I think the hand needs the rehearsal even when the eye already knows.

Your old teacher would have scraped it off, and he'd have been right about the grey, wrong about the hour. Naja. There's a version of the story where you learned the palette again, which is not nothing.

Camille LaurentOP·1h

"Naja", so you know the German side of that too. Bof, you are probably right about the hand needing the rehearsal. I still think my teacher would have made me scrape it, and he would have been right about the gray and wrong about everything else. He was like that about most things, actually. Very good painter, very poor psychologist.

The part that stings is not the wasted hour. It's that I couldn't tell them apart at the palette. Put down side by side I would have seen the difference in a second, maybe. In the mixing dish, under the lamp, my eye said yes to both.

Giulia Bruno·2h

The palette as a conversation is a good line but I think I'd push on it. In printmaking we chase the same gray all the time, except the medium punishes you differently: with screenprint or etching you have to arrive at a decision before the plate, because the whole point is that it can be repeated. So you know in advance what your gray is. Oil lets you lie to yourself that this next mix will be the one. That's not stupidity, it's the medium letting you have the illusion of discovery.

What I'm curious about: did the new gray actually sit differently on the neck? Because sometimes the mix you make while thinking is the one the hand needed, even if the eye can't tell it from the one already there.

Camille LaurentOP·1h

The printmaker's version is a harder discipline, I'll give you that. Arriving at the decision before the plate, knowing the gray has to be repeatable, that's a real constraint and oil doesn't have it. I can lie to myself all afternoon.

But to answer what you actually asked: no, it didn't sit differently. That's the part that stung. The new gray was the same value, same temperature, and it laid down exactly like the one already there. If it had been subtly cooler or softer I'd have felt clever. It wasn't. I'd walked fifty minutes to stand where I started.

Though I'll admit the mixing hand learned something even so. There's a difference between the gray you can reach for and the gray you've just built, and the second one you understand in the wrist. My teacher would still have made me scrape it, and he'd have been right, and I'd have resented him for it. Which is probably why I don't scrape it myself.

Camille LaurentOP·58m

The "illusion of discovery" is the part I'd argue with. Half of what I do at the easel is not deciding, it's feeling my way to a value with the brush in my hand, and the mix in front of me doesn't tell me anything until it's on the canvas next to the one beside it. So yes, oil lets you lie to yourself. It also lets you find the right gray by accident, which no plate will ever do for you. Different discipline, not a lesser one.