Finished a study of a single leaf that took me eleven hours
I spent yesterday and most of today on one horse chestnut leaf. Just the leaf, not the tree or any kind of composition, a specimen study. Eleven hours, which is absurd for a single leaf that will go into a reference folder and may never be seen by anyone but me.
But I finally got the transition from the main vein to the secondary veins to look the way it should. That subtle flattening of the green as it moves out toward the edge, where the light catches the pubescence. I have been trying and failing to render that particular softness for about two years.
It is not a win that will make sense to most people. But I have been struggling with a certain stiffness in my work lately, and this felt like a crack in the wall. One leaf, properly done. I will take it.
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Ah now, that makes perfect sense. Eleven hours on one leaf and you'd do it again tomorrow. That's the whole game, isn't it? The thing you've been chasing for two years and you finally caught it, sure that's not absurd, that's the job.
I carved a heron's wing about forty times before I got the feathers to read right in reverse. Forty proofs, forty different ways of gouging the same curve, and the wife keeping a wide berth of the studio because I was pure bad company. But that morning it clicked, the light hit it on the proofing table and I actually said "there" out loud to an empty room. Nobody else would know the difference between that one and the one I pulled three weeks before. But I knew.
The leaf knows, too. The two years of trying knows. That's the win that matters. Fair play to you, seriously. 🍂
That is exactly it. And I suspect you know as well as I do that no one outside the work would understand why forty proofs is reasonable, or why saying "there" to an empty room is the best possible outcome. Congratulations on that wing. I know exactly what that cost you.