I have this old cookie tin, the kind with the dented lid, and in it go the pastel studies that don't work. Not the disasters, I throw those out. The almost. The ones where the mouth is right but the jaw is wrong or the whole thing is just slightly dead in a way I can't name.

I counted today while I was looking for a Sennelier that rolled under the desk. Forty-one. Eighteen of them are the same face.

I don't know why I keep them or what I think will happen. It's not a nice tin to look through. But every time I say I will empty it I open it first and then I don't. There is one from maybe two years ago that is better than anything I have made since, and I don't know how I did it, and that is the real reason the tin stays full I think.

Does anyone else keep the failures? Or do you destroy them properly like a functioning person. Asking for a friend who is me.