This untitled ink and watercolour sketch by the extraordinary Californian artist Martin Ramirez somewhere between 1948 and 1963 seems to sum up my week.

I’m spending every waking hour at a desk with a train of a deadline thundering noisily past the window.

This little person doesn’t have toppling bookshelves full of wonderful art books though (and nor do they have a wonderful swiveling chair which arrived on Monday, and which distracted me for several happy minutes, until I felt a bit woozy with all that turning.)

I will leave all other kind of writing until I have finished this new book, but I’d like, first, to share a little insight into the color genius Wassily Kandinsky’s practice, from when in 1900 he was an art student, studying in Munich under Franz von Stuck.

Kandinsky was advised to keep the important things at the centre of his attention. Photo: Creative Commons Sytske–R

“Sometimes I had to think for a long time about his comments after he had corrected me – but later I almost always found them valid. I had the annoying fault of not being able to finish a picture; he had only to make one comment to put it right. He told me that I worked too tensely, that I grasped what was interesting from the very first and spoilt it by spending too long over the uninteresting part of the work.”

That, I feel right now, could be pretty smart advice.