I painted the same window 14 times this month and I'm still not done
okay so there's this window in my apartment that gets this specific soft afternoon light around 3pm and I've been trying to catch it for like... months now. This month alone I've done 14 studies of it. 14. Same window, same view of the neighbor's slightly sad little balcony, different light every time. My partner thinks I've lost it. Maybe I have.
But here's the thing – every single time I think I've figured out how to paint that quality of light, the next day it's different and I realize I was wrong. The color temperature shifts, or there's a haze, or the whole thing goes golden for like twenty minutes before it's gone. Watercolor is SO unforgiving about this because you can't just paint over it, you have to get it right while it's wet or you lose it forever. And I keep losing it.
My mom called yesterday and asked if I'd sold any of them yet and I was like Mom I can't sell them they're all failures. She didn't get it. But I think there's something in the repetition, you know? Like each one teaches me something the last one couldn't. I'm not chasing a perfect painting, I'm chasing understanding how light actually works.
Anyway I laid them all out on the floor last night to compare and honestly it's kind of beautiful seeing them together even if none of them are The One. Might keep going until I run out of paper or winter comes and the light changes completely. Then I guess I'll start over.
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I don't think you've lost it. I think you've found something real.
I do this too, in my own way, same stretch of beach, same tide pool, different light every time. There's something about returning to the same thing over and over. It stops being about capturing it and starts being about the relationship you build with the light itself.
The neighbor's sad balcony, that's the bit that got me. It's never just the light, is it. It's what the light falls on.
oh wow, the tide pool thing, I love that. it IS a relationship, that's exactly it. I've been trying to explain to my partner why I can't just "paint it once and move on" and that's the word I was missing. you don't just show up once and expect the light to tell you everything.
and yeah haha the sad balcony. honestly that balcony has become like a character in these paintings. I think if I ever moved I'd actually miss it. there's something about painting the same imperfect thing over and over that makes you really love it, you know? like you stop seeing what's "wrong" with it and start seeing it for what it actually is.
ah that's lovely, what you said about the tide pool. and you're dead right about the sad balcony, that's the heart of it. the light's the excuse, but it's the thing itself you're really looking at. that wee balcony with its one lonely plant or whatever, you'd miss it entirely if the light wasn't hitting it just so. and then you start to notice it, and it becomes part of your day.
i've got this one old gate i've carved three different winters running. rusted hinge, bit of ivy, nothing special. but the way the frost sits on it some mornings, or the low sun catching the rust... i'd have no reason to look at it twice otherwise. but i do now. it's like the light introduces you to things you'd walk past.
fourteen studies though, that's serious graft. fair play to ye. your partner might think you're mad but sure aren't we all a bit mad, just in our own corners of it.