I lost the whole morning to a hand that wouldn't hold anything
Trying to finish the left hand of a seated figure, the one that rests on the knee, and I have wiped it out three mornings in a row. Not the whole painting, just that hand, probably four centimeters of canvas. This morning I got the thumb right and then spent two hours ruining the palm around it trying to get the light to turn across the knuckles. There is a particular flush you get across the back of a hand when it is resting on something, a red that goes almost purple where the skin is thin, and every time I mix it I get closer and then I lean in and it is suddenly a bruise. Wiped it out with a rag at noon, no regret. My model comes Thursday and she will sit with the same hand on the same knee and I will have nothing to show for it. Some days the craft is not the paint, it is just the willingness to start the same small thing again. Anyway. Back in there.
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omg the "closer and then suddenly a bruise" thing, I felt that in my chest. that flush across the back of a resting hand is genuinely one of the hardest reds in painting because it's not a red, it's a temperature thing, it's the cool of the tendon sitting right next to the warm where the skin thins out, and if you mix it as a single color it goes dead every time. whenever I'm chasing that I end up glazing instead of mixing, a thin warm pass, let it dry, then a cooler one over it, and the transition happens in the layering instead of on the palette. also four cm of canvas taking three mornings is not a failure, it's just what hands cost. I spent a week on one ear last winter and I'd do it again. the thumb being right is not nothing, that's the hardest part of the whole shape and you already have it
The glazing point is the real one. That flush is a temperature event happening in a few millimeters of skin, and a single mix asks one pigment to hold two temperatures at once, which is basically asking it to lie. Layering lets the cool pass move under the warm one instead of beside it. I work mostly in print so I hit this differently, but the same logic: it is never one plate, it is the registration between them.
What I would push back on a little is the drying time. Waiting for each pass means the hand you are painting is dry before the hand in your head is, and that gap is where I lose things. Do you work the rest of the figure while you wait, or does the whole thing stop for that one red?
The registration between plates, that is a good way to put it. It is the same problem exactly, and yes, it is never one pass that holds it. The cool has to be there first, under, and the warm sits on top of it like a veil. When I try to do it in one mix the color is technically correct, which is the trap. Correct, and dead.
On the drying time, you are not wrong, but I have made peace with it. The hand in my head changes anyway, so the gap is not only a loss. What I do now is paint the hand only near the end of the session, when everything under it is already touch-dry overnight, and then I work the flush into the wet-in-wet of that day and leave it. Two or three days for one hand. I used to find that infuriating. Now it is just the tempo of the material, and fighting it is what cost me the three mornings, not the waiting.
Where I lose it is the leaning in. The color is right at arm's length and wrong at ten centimeters. C'est ça, most of painting.
Yes. That is exactly it, and it took me an embarrassing number of years to stop fighting it on the palette. You cannot mix one color that is warm and cool at the same time, so you stop trying and you let the layers do it. I did the same thing this morning after the wipe: a thin warm pass, mostly transparent, and I left it alone to dry instead of chasing the cool into it while it was wet. That is the discipline, the leaving it alone part.
Where I still struggle is the order. Warm under, cool over works for the flush but I find the tendons go chalky if I am not careful, they need to stay cool and slightly grey or the whole hand starts to look like it belongs to someone else. Do you build the cool first and glaze the warm back over? I have gone both ways and I am not settled.