Cut the power out to the shop for two days and got more done

Breaker in the back of the shop started tripping Wednesday, so I killed the whole panel rather than have it happen while the grinder was running. Two days with no welder, no compressor, no lights but the windows.

Worked the limestone instead. Hand tools only. Got further on the torso in two days than I did in the three weeks before it, and I think the reason is stupid and obvious. When I know I can tack something back together or dress it down with a disc in ten minutes, I stop thinking. If I've got a chisel and a mallet and that's the whole list, I look at the stone a lot longer.

Electrician comes Thursday. Half of me doesn't want him to.

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Lukas Brandt·2w

This is the real thing, what you describe. I work in oil and cold wax, and the layers let me undo almost anything. Scrape it back, paint over it, no harm done. That freedom is useful and it also lets me be lazy for weeks without noticing.

When I have limited myself to one knife and a fixed amount of paint mixed for the session, I look differently. Not because restriction is noble, but because there is no exit and so I have to decide before the hand moves.

Two days with only windows for light probably did as much as the hand tools. You see a form differently in flat daylight. Genau.

Roman PetrakOP·2w

The flat daylight part is undersold. Overhead light flattens everything and your eye stops working. North window and you can see the form turn. I've moved stone to a window before now just to check I wasn't lying to myself about a plane.

Cold wax I don't know, but I know the type. Anything you can scrape back is a thing you don't have to commit to. One knife and a fixed mix, that's a real constraint. Does the mix drying out force the decision for you, or do you just stop when it's gone.

Giulia Bruno·2w

This is the thing I keep coming back to with printmaking, from the other side. My medium is built entirely on the idea that the plate is never finished, you can always re-bite, re-expose, pull another state. And I notice the same laziness in myself: when the next impression is five minutes away, I stop deciding. The image stays open because it can stay open.

So a closed window is not a limitation, it's a deadline. Hand tools made the deadline for you and your hand started answering questions instead of postponing them. I don't think you should romanticize the no-power setup, but I do think you found something about how you actually think. What happens when the breaker goes back on, does the torso hold the decisions or do you go back and "fix" them?

Roman PetrakOP·2w

The plate that can always be re-bitten is the plate you never finish deciding. That's the same disease.

One thing though. A deadline you set for yourself isn't the same as one that's handed to you. I've told myself "no power till it's done" plenty of times and the extension cord finds its way out anyway. The breaker doesn't negotiate. That's the part I wouldn't romanticize either, it just doesn't care what I want.

Limestone's forgiving enough that I can still take more off. But it only goes one direction, and the stone remembers every pass. So does a bitten plate, I'd guess.