This last week I’ve been preparing canvases for 6 new paintings. I’m really eager to start and I love looking at the blank surfaces and wondering what they’ll look like in a month’s time when hopefully I’ve finished them.

I’m basically an impatient person and I can’t wait to get to the stage when I start finding the painting amongst all the colour, shapes, and lines on the canvas. That’s the part I love. Some people love the early stage the most where you’re building the painting surface and anything goes. There’s no risk involved early on as there isn’t too much to lose – the painting hasn’t developed its character yet.

These people love the freedom they find at this stage of the painting. I find these early stages somewhat tiresome. They’re essential because without them the surface would lack the richness and complexity that you’re piling onto the surface, but I like having a puzzle to play with – I don’t love making the puzzle. If my name was Judy da Vinci, this is the part I would give to my apprentice.

I also don’t have a multitude of sketchbooks for exploring ideas. I have sketchbooks but they are devoid of exploration – I confess. 6 Hail Mary’s and an Our Father for your sins!!

“How can you call yourself an Artist if you don’t have a sketchbook?” I hear you ask. Well, I explore my ideas in the process of my paintings on the canvas. I love trying this and that right there on the canvas. And I love that these explorations become part of the painting and are embedded in the surface. They become the history and as I feel the lumps and bumps on the surface when the painting’s finished, I give myself the right to skip the Hail Mary’s – surely!

I guess by now you’ve gathered that I grew up with the clattering of rosary beads and a weekly hour on the kneeler at the local Catholic Church. ‘Should’ was my motivator and my measuring stick. I should think of others before myself…. and I should take the smallest portion… I should let others go first… and I should do my jobs before I can play…. Which is why at the annual church picnic lolly scramble my mother had to muscle her way into the melange and bending double, scrape up the few available lollies littering the ground for her polite stationery children who couldn’t grab a fist of lollies to save themselves. Nobody had explained that for those brief few minutes in the calendar year we could put our elbows out, push others out of the way and fill our pockets.

Back to the studio. Feeling a serious dose of Should yesterday I decided to explore some ideas in a sketchbook. I’ve been wanting to understand the differences between the range of blue paint that I have. Every time I plop my paint onto my palette – I conduct a brief debate as to which of the blues I should use. Knowing which blues I like to use and which ones I never use but should try, led me to devoting a couple of hours mixing and experimenting.

I ruled up a page into a grid and filled in 50 small squares with harmonious colour; mixing each blue with another colour, adding white, and then greying it off with black and white. I then introduced another warm colour to dial up the intensity again. It was so much fun and SO interesting. I learnt stuff!! Soon I was ruling up more squares and plopping a couple of yellows to try out, then it was variations of pyrrole red and quinacridone crimson on another 50 squares.

When eventually I called it a day and had 3 pages of my sketchbook gridded and painted, the sense of righteous virtuosity was almost tangible. There you are – a REAL Artist I must be!!

I was surprised by how much I had enjoyed this exercise and how much I had learnt about colour mixing. I wondered why I had put off doing this for so long. I think it comes back to impatience. I just want to finish paintings. This is all well and good, but I think my next paintings may have a few nuances of colour that maybe have been lacking up to now. Or at least I can stop debating over the blues.

When I learnt the piano, before playing I would do scales – or I would rush through them. Before playing a game of tennis, we have a warm-up – actually it’s quite vital to get our aging bodies into ‘move’ mode. I don’t seem to have this function on automation.

I think doing a few pages in the sketchbook is a bit like scales or stretching before a game. Maybe it informs the creative muscle memory, gets the juices flowing, and puts you in the right place for peak performance with a brush in hand. Will I make this a habit? I should, but probably won’t… but I think I’ll be more open to the idea of exploring in a sketchbook in the future. I can see the benefit.

But like all exercise, it will probably take a degree of discipline for it to become a habit.

Hail Mary, Full of Grace….

Come and join me in my Facebook Group The Upbeat Artists Group. It’s an amazing community full of artists and creatives at all different stages of their journey, sharing their work and supporting each other. You would be very welcome.