Your Art Studio Needs a Wingman
- Denise Cerro
- 24 hours ago
- 3 min read
Turning Extra Paint Into Another Painting
Every painter ends up with extra paint. Too much to throw away, not enough to justify a new canvas. Most of it gets scraped off onto paper towels, palettes, or into the trash. But over time, I started treating those leftovers differently instead of wasting them. I started applying them to a side panel next to my easel...a surface with no expectations, no plan, and no pressure.
I like to call it my Wingman.
My Wingman surface is where all the excess paint gets a second life. A swipe from a sky, a leftover edge color from a portrait, an accidental texture from a palette knife...all of it lands there. At first it feels random, disconnected, kinda chaotic...but after enough sessions, something starts happening.
All or part of the pieces in this post were once just a painting I was working on...with a Wingman close by. In most cases, the wingman either became a companion piece to the painting, or a painting all on it's own. A wingman also gives you a place to rest and take your eyes off the painting you're working on and just mess around over on the side, get rid of excess paint...and play!
A second painting may be showing up.
Sometimes the Wingman becomes a study for a larger work, other times it quietly reveals the beginning of an entirely new series. The freedom of using “leftover” paint removes the pressure to make something important, and ironically, that’s often where the most honest ideas appear. There’s no preciousness in it, no overthinking, just instinct.
I’ve found that some of my strongest creative directions don’t arrive when I’m forcing a painting. They appear sideways, in the margins, while I’m busy doing something else. The Wingman catches those moments before they disappear.
(and yeah...this was back when I had really short hair...I kinda miss those days!)
These are less of a scrap panel and more of a visual conversation running parallel to your main piece, a companion piece before the companion exists. A map of decisions, accidents, and subconscious choices. The Wingman reminds me that paintings rarely arrive alone, one piece often carries the seed of the next. A series doesn’t always announce itself with a grand idea...sometimes it sneaks in through leftover paint.
And if you pay attention, your Wingman will tell you when it’s time to follow it. Above is a piece I just completed...you may remember it from last week's post. I just started working on creating something with the standby canvas (my wingman) and added that process to my YouTube channel this week...next week I'll finish it off and hopefully end up with a painting I like, or at the very least...a canvas I can cut up and add into something else.
Nothing goes to waste in my studio...one more thing to love about mixed media!
Take a look at where this piece started and where it is halfway through... and subscribe and hit the bell while you're there so you can see where it ends up next week.
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All of the work in this post is available here on my website...
Click the titles below each piece...
A few are even at a lower price in my Ageless portfolio!
Take a look around and enjoy!
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