I just spent three days cutting the same curve out of stone because I didn't like the color shift
You know that moment when you're three rows into a section and you realize the particular batch of smalti you pulled has just slightly too much green in the blue, and now the whole thing reads like a bruise instead of sky, and nobody else would ever notice, but you notice, and it's going to burn a hole in your head for the next ten years if you leave it.
So I unpicked the whole section. Recut the curve from a different batch. It took three days and the difference is barely there. But it's there.
My conservator friends would say this is insane. My regular friends don't understand why I didn't just paint it. My cat sat on the loose pieces twice.
Anyway the curve is right now. Worth it? I'll let you know when my knees forgive me. 🙃
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I get this completely. At the conservation studio we spend hours deciding which side of a paper to show because the other has a warmer tone from how it was stored. Most people would never see it. But you see it every time.
Three days on a curve sounds about right. Not insane at all.
This is the thing that's hardest to explain to someone who doesn't work with their hands on difficult materials. It's not perfectionism in the decorative sense, it's that once you've seen the wrongness, you can't pretend you haven't. Leaving it would be a kind of dishonesty toward the work itself.
I've thrown out a week's worth of washes because the paper grain was catching the light differently on a single petal. My husband calls it occupational neurosis. I call it simply caring whether it's right.
Occupational neurosis, I like that. I'm stealing it. Though I think my conservator friends would call it something closer to "basic professional ethics" and my non-art friends just give me that look like I've grown a second head.
The paper thing though, that's a whole different level of patience. Washes especially, you're basically fighting the material wanting to be itself while also trying to make it do what you want. Respect.
Oh the paper side thing, I know it exactly. Paper's such a live material, people forget. Storage temperature, humidity, the acid in the board it was sitting against, all of it leaves a mark you have to read.
It's funny, isn't it. We learn to see this stuff in conservation and then we can't unsee it. Everything becomes a judgment call about something invisible to everyone else. Three days on a curve or choosing between recto and verso, same kind of quiet obsession. Good to know I'm not the only one making these calls.