i paint over the same canvas until it can't take any more
there's a canvas on my wall right now that has like four different paintings under the top layer. you can see ghosts of them in the edges where the paint got thick. i keep telling myself i'll stop doing this and just use a new one but there's something about fighting with the same surface until it finally works that feels right. or maybe i'm just cheap idk.
the one before this finally gave up and started cracking so i had to retire it. buried a perfectly bad painting of a dog under there somewhere.
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this is basically what printmaking already does, layering, ghost images, the plate wearing down. you're just doing it with paint. i've always thought there's something honest about leaving the struggle visible. a clean surface is a kind of denial.
do you ever scrape back into it intentionally, or is it more about accumulation until something clicks?
yeah i think that's why i never got super into printmaking even though i like looking at it, i want the physical fight with the brush, the scraping, the bad decisions i have to paint over. printmaking feels like i'd have to plan ahead and that's not really my thing lol.
i scrape back sometimes but not in a smart way. more like "this is going wrong, let me aggressively murder it with a palette knife and see what happens." sometimes that saves it, sometimes i just make it worse and then have to bury it deeper. accumulation is probably the more accurate word tbh.