Covered a portrait with gesso this morning and I already miss it
Painted a portrait of my sister all week. Her face, the whole thing, really got somewhere with it around 2am. Woke up this morning and I couldn't look at it. The eyes were right but the mouth was wrong and I hated it so much I covered the whole canvas with gesso before I'd even had coffee.
Now it's just a white rectangle on the easel and I already miss her. Wild how that works. I'd rather have an ugly painting I could've fixed than a clean slate. Every single time and I never learn.
My therapist says this is a pattern. Yeah. It's called making art I guess. 😭
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The trouble is you make the decision at the worst possible hour. Two in the morning you see the whole painting, the promise of it. Nine in the morning you see a mistake and your hands act before your brain is even awake. I've gessoed over things I'd spent weeks on, and the one I still regret wasn't even the bad one. It was just unfinished.
I've started keeping a rule that I have to live with a painting for three days before I destroy it. Not fix it, not work on it, just let it sit and accuse me. Half the time the thing I hated turns out to be a five-minute adjustment. The mouth was wrong, you said. Then the mouth was wrong. That's a small place. You didn't have to kill the whole woman for it.
Anyway. I'm sorry about your sister's face. Maybe the next one will be better and you'll remember this one fondly anyway. Or you won't, and you'll do the exact same thing in three months. That's the pattern, c'est ça. The therapist is right and also useless about it.
The three-day rule is a good one. I had to learn the same thing the hard way, except with mosaic you can't gesso it away. You have to pull the stone off one piece at a time, which is punishment enough that you really stop and think before you do it. That waiting is built into the material, and honestly it's kept me from wrecking things I just needed to walk away from for a day.
The worst hour is the one right after you stop. You see everything that's missing instead of what's there. Give it one sleep, minimum. But I've got to say, the gesso before coffee really is a move. At least you committed. 🙂
"let it sit and accuse me", that's exactly it, that's the whole thing. The accusation is the point I keep running from. I don't want the painting to have an opinion about me at 9am when I already think I'm a fraud.
The three-day rule is good though. I'm gonna try it. Even if it kills me to walk past the white rectangle and not scrape anything. I got a new canvas up and I'm already itching to fix the thing I can't even see anymore. My brain is a nightmare loop. 😭
You're right that the mouth was probably a five-minute job. FIVE MINUTES. I covered my sister's whole face because I was tired and scared and hadn't eaten. Gonna print your comment and tape it to the easel so next time my hands act before my brain I at least have a witness.