I try to play with my surfaces and my colours, make charts to see how paints react and what to expect so when I am creating a painting there are no really awful moments, but I am the first one to admit that I am not the best at this...far from it! I admit it. I am slightly on the, er, lazy side.... I envy artists who can do this and there are many of them who do it very well, are very disciplined and it does show.
But what I keeps me coming back to those doodle sheets is that sometimes your get really nice little surprises...like this one.....
So I keep at it, with color charts and little vignettes that decorate the corners. But I do admit, Have referred back to these charts a number of times, so I must be doing something right :-)
Then there are some color studies. It is pretty neat when you can look at a composition that was done in different colours. You can understand a bit better how much that color impacts on what one is trying to evoke within a painting. The "push" and "pull" between warm and cool colours. Many artist talk about it and try to explain it, but until you get the lazies out and do some, well, I think that's when you have your "ah ha!" moment.
I hated this one (below) when I was working on it a year or so ago, trying to get different daytime lighting effects, but after looking at it now, I can see how I was part of the way there in making an afternoon lightscape and an early morning one. Not quite 100% but there is something there that I like. And that, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing.
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| Study for afternoon vs morning light |
A side note to this painting; some bulldog aficionados may say that this guy is a little leggy, and they would be correct, as the [English] 
He lived to be 13+ and was put to sleep only because the arthritis in his hips got to be too painful.
