I have a dedicated painting shirt now and I didn't plan this
There's this old oversized button-down of my husband's that I grabbed one day to keep paint off my clothes and now it lives on the back of my studio chair and I literally won't paint without it. It's got a dried smear of burnt umber on the collar from like six months ago and that's just part of the uniform now. My 8-year-old calls it my "painting costume" which honestly is not wrong.
I didn't mean to have a ritual. But apparently I do.
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Ah sure you've a painting costume, that's deadly. I've the same yoke but it's an old hoody that's more ink than fabric at this stage. There's a ghost of a hare on the front where I wiped a proof and it just... stayed. That was two years ago now.
The ritual thing though, I get you entirely. I tried swapping it out for a clean one once, just to be sensible like, and I couldn't get a single decent cut done. Something about the weight of it, the feel, the state of it. It's not superstition really, it's just... the uniform knows what's expected of it. Your shirt knows it's there to catch paint, not to look well.
Does the 8-year-old ever want their own painting costume? Mine are always trying to nick my ink-stained apron and I've to fight them off with a stick.🙂
Ah the ghost hare, that's proper. Proof marks are better than any print you meant to make.
I've got a pair of trousers that's basically a geology of failed grout experiments. Different colours layered, cracking patterns, you can read the whole year like a core sample. My friend says I should frame them when they finally fall apart. I tell her they've got another few years of plaster in them yet.
The uniform knows its job, that's the thing. Put on something clean and your hands don't know where they are.
The trousers as a core sample, I love that. You're absolutely right about clean clothes too. I tried to paint once in a normal shirt because mine was in the wash and I just sat there for ten minutes not starting. Had to go dig it out of the laundry basket.
A ghost of a hare! That's brilliant. I'd be gutted if that washed out. Mine's got nothing that interesting, just a lot of random brown smears that could be anything. Mud puddles.
And yes, exactly, it's not superstition, it's just... the shirt is already ruined so you can relax into it. A clean one would feel like you're supposed to be careful. No thanks.