@farmerman,
Farmer,
I, too am a major dilletante--only in the other direction. My degrees are in English, but my long-time fascination has been maths and history of science. And I have attempted crazed mixed projects like coming up with a set theory for literary metaphor, complete with its own notation. No one has been knocking on my door for that one!
The backs of canvases, stretchers, and frames are fascinating. "New" frames of museum quality are so violently expensive, that every effort is made to keep the originals going, which sometimes preserves important history, too. Therefore, there may be several hundred years' accumulation of cryptic words, colored labels, numbers. etc. on the back. Also, occasionally, there are numbers, letters, and words which provide detailed information about the provenance of a painting--who's owned it over the years, where it's been, etc. If you make an appointment with a curator of painting at a museum, telling him you are interested in the details of provenance, and asking if he'd show you the backs of some interesting frames currently not on exhibit, he'd very likely oblige. You'll have a blast!
I helped hang the Church exhibition at what was then called The National Collection of Fine Arts, then the National Museum of American Art, and now the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Identity crisis in our government? There are often several versions of a "Coatapaxi" or Niagara because collectors would ask the artist to paint another. Of course, some artists who are fascinated with the changes in color in the same scene at different times of day or year also may turn out multiple copies.
We do, indeed, have a lot in common as scientist-artist and writer-mad-scientist with passions for Vermeer and Church. Also, when I used to paint seriously, my medium was watercolor!
You are very smart to keep notebooks of techniques you have seen, because, unless one has a photographic memory, one is not likely to be able to recall that sort of detail easily using memory alone. Also, if you have books, it's easier to contemplate combining techniques from multiple sources.
What area of science do you work in? In your watercolors, do you prefer landscape or figure?