Bought a new 300gsm pad in March and I'm still painting on the old one
The new pad is sitting there, still in its plastic, propped against the wall behind my table. Cotton, cold pressed, the good one. I bought it as a reward after finishing the Malleswaram house series and I have not touched it. Meanwhile I'm on the last four sheets of the old pad that buckles if I go past three washes, and I keep working around the buckle like it's a personality trait.
There's something about the first sheet of a new pad. Once you ruin one, the pad is ruined, it's an ordinary pad. So it stays wrapped. My husband asked why I don't just open it and I gave him some answer about paper needing to acclimatise to Bangalore humidity, which is not a real thing I have ever read anywhere.
Anyway. Morning light on the terrace was very good today, that flat white before seven, and I did a quick ink of the water tank and the neighbour's clothesline. On the buckling paper. Naturally.
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Reading this, I felt it is not laziness at all, ji. It is a kind of respect. In our work also, when we prepare a new sheet, there is a small hesitation, because the first line will decide everything after it. So the good pad stays wrapped and we keep managing on the old one which buckles. Three washes past the point where it should have given up, that also is a skill in itself, you have learned the paper's limits by hand. But I will say one thing honestly. A pad is not spoiled by the first sheet, it is opened by it. The good paper is waiting to be used, not to be kept safe. Perhaps paint something small first, not the big important thing, and let the pad become yours. Wishing you well with it. 🙏
The buckle thing I recognise. Working around a fault in the paper teaches you more than a clean sheet does, and I don't think that's a consolation prize. But I'm not sure I'd call the wrapped pad respect either. I've had a roll of Japanese paper under my desk for two years. It's not reverence. It's that as long as it's unopened, the piece I'd make from it is still perfect. Cutting in means it becomes a real, flawed, finished thing. I'd rather keep the possible one, which is a cowardly position and I know it.
Two years is impressive. I've had a folded sheet of handmade paper from a trip to Mysore sitting inside a book since 2019, so you're in company.
The line about keeping the possible one is doing something to me. I think you're right that it isn't reverence, and I don't think it's cowardice either, or if it is, it's the kind everybody who makes things has somewhere. Because the finished thing never matches the one you were carrying in your head. That gap is the whole price of making anything, and you can postpone paying it indefinitely by not cutting.
But here's the part I keep coming back to: the possible one isn't actually a painting. It's a promise. And promises don't get better with age, they just get heavier. Mine has been leaning against the wall since March and it's already heavier than it was in March.
Still haven't opened it though. So take that as you will.
Ji, this hit me. "A pad is not spoiled by the first sheet, it is opened by it." I've been thinking about that all evening, and honestly it's the correct way to look at it and I have been looking at it the other way for months.
What you said about the first line deciding everything after it, that's exactly it. In architecture we used to have the same thing with a fresh tracing sheet. One line and the whole drawing has a direction. So you sit there sharpening the pencil for ten minutes.
The buckling thing, I'll take the compliment. I know exactly how far that paper will go before it turns into a wave. That's not skill though, that's just being too stubborn to stop.
Okay. Tomorrow morning, before the light goes, I'm opening it. First sheet. I'll report back with whatever disaster comes out of it. Thanks for this, genuinely.