Palette Cleanser
I like cleaning. I like maintaining my art supplies and shop tools. It puts me in this anxiety-resistant, peaceful headspace — very similar to the headspace I’m in when I’m making art.
But sometimes, every once in a while, when the projects stack up and time gets tight, things just slip through the cracks.
People get busy. Life gets in the way. You think, “I should clean the palette today, but…I’m gonna be using it tomorrow. I’ll do it then.” That same thing happens the next day, and the next, and suddenly there’s weeks-old paint lining your tin and rust crumbling into your half-pans.
It reminds me of my mom asking me to clean my room as a kid, and me sidestepping the chore for something more fun like drawing or watching tv or staring at a wall. Of course, as the weeks passed, and my apathy endured, the room became carpeted in shucked off clothes, comic books, overturned board games, and art supplies. And when my mom’s patience finally wore down, I’d be conscripted to scrubbing that room spotless before ever seeing a television again.
Those weekend-long cleaning marathons as a child helped me develop much more efficient maintenance schedules as an adult. For the most part. But, like I said, sometimes things just slip through the cracks.
This week’s video is a rundown of how I took that neglected paintbox from a swampy biohazard to a pleasant, workable paint palette. I cover things like removing rust and scraping paint off the pans — a complete overhaul. And while the palette went through its rebirth, I used an alternate palette to work on a commission with a tight deadline.
Working on this Bigfoot and Scout piece with a clean palette created a synergistic effect that made that alpha state seem even more meditative. More peaceful and more enjoyable. Like there was carryover contentedness from the palette cleansing that supercharged the serenity of the painting process. I’ll have to remind myself of that if I ever start slacking on my tool maintenance. If that isn’t enough, then I’ll just try to recall how it felt losing an entire Saturday to cleaning my bedroom, hearing my brothers in the living room getting to watch all the cartoons I was missing.
