Sometimes I begin a painting by using up the jars and tubes of paint that are almost empty. This time I succeeded in going through many jars that had just a small amount of some mixture: grays, yellows, orange, magenta, and green.
I brushed each color on the canvas from left to right, creating bands of color that took up more or less space depending on how much paint was left in the jar. While I was going through all my jars, I discovered some that had grown mold and threw those out. In other words, I had a fall cleaning.
Once I covered the whole canvas with a brush, I used a palette knife to apply white and parchment across the center of the canvas, mixing them with the colors already there. I think this finally ended up as a reasonable background to begin painting against next time.
Then I went to the sink and washed out all those empty jars for reuse in mixing new colors.
