Don’t Touch My Palette: The Power of Artistic Ritual

Years ago, I was sharing a studio space with some other artists, and one of them asked me if he could borrow my watercolor palette.  I handed it over without thinking about it too much. Later, he brought it back to me, CLEAN.

The travel watercolor set had half pans of paint on one side, and a large mixing area on the other that had been covered in paint dabs from tubes and dried, mixed paint. Watercolor painters will know that the dry areas on a mixing palette can be easily reactived with water. A watercolor palette with a nice, gritty patina can help unify a palette when used correctly.

Accordingly, I had never cleaned my travel set.  I had a loose palette organization, and there were areas on that dirty palette that I knew very intimately would create just the perfect shade of off-purple.  I had taken that palette with me to Europe and to South America, and the mixing wells were a record of all the paintings I had made there.  It was a relic, and that guy rinsed it off.

He was proud of himself, like he had done me a favor.

I don’t mind telling you, I cried.  I realized that a watercolor travel set, at least for me, is a very personal palimpsest of the kinds of paintings I have made, and it goes without saying I never “loaned” one out again.

When you make art, you are doing something special.  The tools and the space you inhabit are special too.  That palette had deep meaning for me that I didn’t even know was there (until it was gone). 

The French have two lovely phrases: misc en scene and misc en place. In theater, misc en scene is everything the actor will need for perform (the props, lights, blocking, etc). In cooking, misc en place is all the tools and ingredients the chef needs to create a meal.

Artists need have a misc en place as well, often called “meez” by chefs. 

My favorite colors, brushes, palettes, and other tools are my meez.  I’ve learned that when you are making art, honoring your supplies the way a chef protects their “meez” is an important part of the process. When you consider your tools carefully, it can make your process more effective and pleasurable.

What Artists Can Learn from Mise en Place

Here’s an example. I film a lot of my creative work for my social media content. For a long time, I was frustrated by the required set up. I would need to position the camera and lights, get a fresh memory card and camera battery, set up camera settings, and then get all the materials needed for the project. I would impatiently rush through the process––or worse, procrastinate the actual creative act because the prep felt too daunting. 

There's that funny meme from a few years ago where a woman is muttering to herself "everything is content, everything is content, don't forget to film it".  The artists I coach tell me that remembering to film their process or document their studio is a continual pain point for them. It is typically unfun and inconvenient. It messes up their creative flow.

That was the case for me, too.  But then I remembered meez.  I now I regard as my filming set up as part of my “warm up”, my ritual.  It gets me in the right headspace to create the art.  It’s part of the priming that transitions me from my “other” life.

Getting my technical filming meez ritual in order took some trial and error, some research, and a bit of uncomfortable failure. I would shoot things that weren't in focus, or the light temperature was wrong, or there was shifting sun from the nearby window that messed up the shot.  I had to simplify the set up.  Instead of having to wildly reposition the lights and test the camera settings, I have a permanent station that requires just a few clicks of the lights to get in full operation.  

After I developed a filming system that works for me, I no longer resent the fact that I have to set up and tend to my meez, I treat it as an important part of the process. 

How Ritual Can Transform the Creative Process

Anthony Bourdain wrote about the value of a thoughtful, unchaotic meez in Kitchen Confidential.

Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not f*** with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it... If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.”

Our beautiful brains are VERY capable of being primed, just like Pavlov’s salivating dogs. We get to set the call and response we want. However, we often set up a ritual that doesn’t accomplish anything at all––a ritual like: work / drive / exhaustion / pizza / TV. We WANT to make a 20 minute painting, but we are primed to watch TV. 

How to Prime Your Brain for Art

It’s clear that creating habits and rituals is a powerful way to automate the process of reaching our goals. Habit and ritual both represent repetitive actions, but ritual has the added benefit of mindfulness and gratitude. 

Anything can become habit and ritual, and we can consciously direct ourselves into the behaviors we want. I know an artist who does her dishes right before she makes art.  It’s her priming time, and something as basic as doing a household task has become a ritual she looks forward to.  

Now, it's highly individual, because some people do the dishes to procrastinate their art, so you'll have to examine if your pre-game art activities are detracting from the event or generative.

Discipline and deliberate focus is an important part of directing our monkey mind, but habit and ritual is where the real power lives.

Habit vs. Ritual: What’s the Difference?

There is some really interesting research about will power.  Some researchers think that "will power" a muscle that gets depleted over the course of the day.  For them, a basic definition of will power is simply to chose one thing over another.  That might be like choosing the gym over the doughnut, but it also might be more neutral, like deciding which pants to wear or what to eat for breakfast.  The concept is that if we spend our energy making inconsequential decisions, and over the day we'll wear out our will power muscle, and then when we need to make an important decision (like decide between making art or watch TV), the will power muscle will fail us and we will not accomplish our goals. 

Using this logic, one of the solutions is to make fewer decisions.  Design a life in which trivial tasks are automated, and you can devote the full force of our intention and will to the things you really care about. 

 Many people like Albert Einstein and Steve Jobs have leveraged this by simplifying their schedules, clothing, and other minor choices, so they can invest their creative brain power to the things they really care about

 So when it comes to thinking about how we want to spend our hours, simplifying things is best.  Once again, this is removing friction.  We can think ahead and begin to plan out the habits, systems, and rituals we want to put in place.

The Hidden Cost of Too Many Choices

My highest values are freedom and spontaneity.  As a result, my natural tendency is not to do a whole ton of planning.  I don’t like anyone telling me what to do, including me.  I know I’m not the only one!

However, the results for me of this lack of planning is a day leap frogging around from task to task and never settling in to do the work I really care about.  I end the day perplexed about what I actually got done, and feeling kinda exhausted and overwhelmed. Oh, and I didn’t get to make much art!  Not planning ahead had become a habit for me, a habit that introduces chaos, and not in a good way.  

Now I make a point about being very conscious about the habits that I’m establishing, because habitual actions do not interfere with my desire for freedom.  They just make it easier for me to do what I need to do to allow freedom and spontaneity to be fully alive where it matters, in my creative work.

I know exactly what I’m going to find in my watercolor palette.

I know exactly how I’m going to film my content.

So let’s get practical about this.  Here’s some homework.  What are natural rhythms in your life?  What does an average day look like?  Do you have accidental habits that create chaos, like me?  You can change them!  But you need to know what you are trying to change.  You can identify your current habits, introduce new rituals and priming that will override the systems that don’t serve you.

And you’ll make a lot more art.