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Been using the same mix of ferric nitrate and water for twenty years. I know exactly how it will take on a given piece of steel, how the humidity matters, how clean the surface is, whether I've overheated the metal before applying it. The bottle from the supply house gives you a predictable brown that looks like nothing I've ever seen on actual weather-worn steel. Last week I watched a younger guy in the shared shop spray on a commercial patina from a pump bottle and wait for it to look like something. That's not how it works. You build it in layers, you react to what the metal does, you stop when it's right, sometimes ten minutes in, sometimes three days. I'm not saying everyone should mix their own. I'm saying the shortcuts don't teach you what's happening.

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.

Just finished the fabrication on a welded steel base for a bronze sculpture that's over seven feet tall. It's about 1500 pounds of mild steel, mostly 4-inch square tube. Had to build a custom jig to get the angles right. The welding is all done, now it's just grinding and prepping for patina. Feels good to get this beast off the floor. It fought me the whole way.