Spent three weeks on a head, hand built, eyes done with a copper wash that finally came out the way I wanted, glaze pooled just under the cheekbone, all of it. And it looks dead. Not subtle dead, museum diorama dead. Like something that should be behind glass with a little card saying what it ate.

The problem is I fixed everything. Every time a fire came out with a chip on the lip or the neck leaned wrong I rebuilt that part until it behaved, and now the whole thing is very correct and has no air in it. My early stuff was a mess but you could feel the hand still moving in it. This one you can't.

I'm not going to smash it, my grandmother would genuinely be upset, she likes this one. But I'm thinking of going back with a low fire stain and putting a hard line through the jaw, something that breaks the symmetry and gives it a direction, like it just got interrupted. Risk is I ruin a piece that took three weeks and is technically the best surface I've ever got out of the kiln.

Anyone else get stuck here? Where the thing is finally good and that's exactly the problem.