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Someone recently asked how long it takes me to finish a watercolour painting, and my reply was: "I honestly can't answer that".
I know, for example, that I spent at least five hours painting this 9" x 11" impression of an apple over the past two weeks.
Before I even picked up a paintbrush, though, I spent about an hour setting up an apple in sunlight and taking reference photos, then sketching my composition onto watercolour paper.
Next, I had to consider the kinds of colours and textures that I wanted to use in this scene - so that I could choose from among my many tubes of watercolour pigments.
For the lighter area to the right of the apple, for example, I knew that I wanted to create an impression of warm candlelight.
To evoke that particular glow, I chose a pigment called Bronzite Genuine, made of an extremely fine-milled mineral of the same name. Bronzite is a semi-precious stone, in a brown hue that often carries a hint of warm orange, known to shimmer; the Bronzite watercolour pigment also shimmers beautifully on the cotton paper.

Once I'd decided on my pigment colour for the candlelit area, I had to consider which colour would work as a dark for the more shadowed side of the fruit. The obvious choice was a blue, as a complementary colour to the slightly orange cast of the Bronzite... but which blue?
At this point, I created several colour-mix swatches to test various blues against - and with - the Bronzite.
These colour-mix swatches are combinations of pigments, in both their wet and dry forms, on a scrap of cotton paper to see how they not only side-by-side but also combined - painted one over the other as glazes, or mixed together as a liquid.
Once I'd selected a blue, I then tried several options for the much darker surface of the table - painting additional colour-mix swatches. Doing all this, simply to choose the pigments I'd use, took at least two hours.
That's three hours, without even touching the actual painting yet!
Beyond that, I don't know how much time I spent actually painting this still life because I tend to lose track of time when I have a paintbrush in my hand.
If my husband is out, I'll often forget to eat, not realizing that it's hours past lunchtime or dinnertime until I start getting a headache or my rumbling tummy disturbs me.
This is what researchers refer to as the "flow state" or "Flow Theory"; when a person becomes so wrapped up in a challenging but pleasant activity that they completely lose track of time.
Flow Theory is also part of what helps me manage my chronic pain from a rare disease named CRPS. When my brain is so engaged with painting, it is in some ways distracted from the pain signals - which means that I feel slightly less pain.
The pain is still there, but it's somehow pushed more into the background of my mind - of my brain.

Given that I began learning to paint in 2021 as a way to help manage both my chronic pain and my Mild Cognitive Impairment - both resulting from CRPS - losing track of time is exactly what I want!
Back to this still life of an apple, I know that I spent at least five hours painting it only because my husband happened to go out - once for two hours and once for three - just after I'd picked up my paintbrushes. And I was keeping track of time more closely, for a virtual meeting, when I was selecting the colours.
So beyond the three hours of preparation and at least five hours of painting, I have no idea how much time I spent painting this still life. And that's just fine with me!