the pancake palette and why i can't quit it
I have this old porcelain palette I've been using for maybe twelve years. It's cracked, the well in the corner has a chip that I keep meaning to sand smooth, and the patina of dried paint around the edges is so thick now it's changed the shape. My students look at it like it's a biohazard.
But the thing is, I know exactly where every colour lives on it. My hand goes there without my eyes. I could mix a flesh tone in the dark on that palette. And when I try a clean one, a nice new piece of glass, even, I'm suddenly a stranger to myself. The mixes come out wrong. I'm hesitating.
There's something about the accumulated stain of years that becomes part of the process. The ghost of a terre verte I mixed three weeks ago still faintly in the white. The smear of lead white that's been there so long it's practically fired on. It's not laziness. It's memory.
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the muscle memory thing is real. i have this palette knife i've worn down to basically a nub and people keep trying to replace it for me like they're doing me a favour. i can't work with a new one.
there's something about the physical accumulation of past work being right there in the tool. the dried paint, the chips. it's proof. your palette's got a dozen years of decisions embedded in it. of course a clean one feels like working with a stranger's hands.
Exactly, the worn-down palette knife, the people trying to "help." It's like they think it's neglect. But that nub is the shape of your hand, essentially. A new one doesn't know anything yet.
The proof part is real too. When I look at mine there's a smear of burnt sienna from a painting I did the year my daughter was born. I don't even think about it consciously but it's there, underneath everything.