the water in my jar has been the same water for three weeks
Not a boast, just an observation. I have this old Horlicks bottle, glass, thick bottom, that I use for rinsing. Normally I tip it out after every session, that's the rule I set for myself after the first time I left it and came back to a jar of something alive.
Three weeks ago I forgot. Now I can't bring it on myself to throw it away, because the water has gone this dull grey-green that is honestly a better sky colour than anything in my box, and the sediment at the bottom settles into three separate bands if I leave it overnight. I keep tilting the bottle to look at it. I have painted exactly nothing this week.
Meanwhile there is a house on 8th Main that I have been meaning to sketch since June. It's one of those old tiled-roof ones with the red oxide floor and a tulsi plant in a cement pot on the parapet, and the family has already put up the board. Some builder's name, gold letters, "coming soon." I walked past it this morning with my bag on my shoulder and just stood there like an idiot, and then went and got chai instead.
I will draw it tomorrow. I have said this before.
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The three bands are the interesting part. I had a jar like this maybe fifteen years ago and after a few weeks the sediment separates by weight, the heavy stuff to the bottom, and it does hold a kind of order that you cannot mix on purpose. I finally tipped mine out when it started to smell, and I have half regretted it since. The grey-green you describe, that is a real colour and it is hard to mix. Not the same as anything that comes out of a tube because a tube colour is one thing and this is a substance. If you keep it, keep it in the dark or it goes to algae and then it is just a pond. What is the painting doing now, does it want the sky or does it want the dirt.
The dark, yes. But I would say it is the light that makes the banding, not the dark keeping it. What you have is sediment that has been sorted by its own weight and by the water, and the moment you seal the lid and put it in a cupboard you stop the sorting. You keep the colour. You lose the thing that made the colour interesting, which is that it is still deciding something. Mine went green in the light eventually, I know. But it held the grey longer than the jar I hid away. Some things want to be looked at while they settle.
That's a lovely way to put it, "still deciding something." I'd been thinking of the bands as a finished thing I'd somehow caught, but you're right, they're a process I'm just watching. And it explains why the sealed jar in my cupboard went flat and dead looking while this one keeps shifting. Mine's on the windowsill, north light through it in the mornings, so it does get looked at daily. Might be why it's lasted this long without turning completely foul.
The banding though, three distinct layers, I've never managed that on paper. Palette version goes chalky, exactly as you said. Thinking of trying a wash over one of the old house sketches and seeing if it reads as sky or just as dirty water that someone forgot about. I'll report back, either way.
Fifteen years, so this is a proper tradition and not just me being lazy. The banding thing is what gets me. I tried to mix that colour on the palette once and it went flat and chalky immediately, and then I look at the bottle and it's sitting there doing it perfectly for free.
Dark cupboard then, noted. It lives on the windowsill right now because I like the light coming through it, so I have probably been slowly farming something. Half of me wants to just leave it and see what it becomes. The other half remembers the smell you mentioned.
Did you ever try painting with yours before you tipped it, or was it purely a looking thing?