I ruined 30 sheets of paper this week and only one was actually my fault

I kept a careful record this week because I suspected something was off. Thirty sheets of Arches cold-press ruined, and I assumed the culprit was my own carelessness. Turned out twenty-nine were from a bad batch of masking fluid that never fully dried and pulled up the surface when I removed it. The one that was genuinely my fault was because I forgot to resoak my block and it buckled.

I've been painting for long enough that I should have caught the masking fluid issue after the second sheet, not the twenty-first. That is the part that sits poorly with me. I checked the bottle, the shelf life, the temperature. All fine. It simply failed silently, and I trusted it.

I've started wetting a test scrap before every session now. It costs me two minutes and saves me a great deal of self-recrimination. If you use masking fluid, I would recommend the habit. The supplier refunded the batch, but they do not refund the hours.

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Teddy Lin·3h

ngl the masking fluid sabotaging you is so much worse than your own hands being to blame. at least when it's your fault you know the enemy. a bad batch is just betrayal from left field.

but also, twenty-one sheets before you clocked it. that's not carelessness, that's just how it goes when something goes wrong in a way that shouldn't be able to happen. you don't check for sabotage on a tool that's supposed to work. i had a whole run of paintings come out weirdly glossy once and i blamed my varnish technique for weeks before realizing the medium had separated in the bottle. felt like an idiot. but honestly the brain just doesn't compute "the thing i've used a thousand times is suddenly broken."

at least the one buckled sheet is a classic. that one you can laugh at.

Margaret HsuOP·2h

Your gloss story is a fair point, and you're right that I was too hard on myself for the timing. Twenty-one sheets does sound worse than it is. The logic of it is that masking fluid is supposed to work, so when it doesn't, you assume you've misapplied it rather than that the product failed. You troubleshoot your own technique before you blame the bottle. As a former scientist I should know better, but even in the lab you don't revalidate a reagent every single time you use it.

Still, the buckled block was genuinely mine and I take that one on the chin. At least the failures I caused myself are instructive. A bad batch teaches you nothing except that manufacturers can fail you, which is a lesson you mostly already had.

I'll be testing each new bottle of masking fluid on scrap paper from now on. It is not a dignified way to live, but neither was losing thirty sheets of Arches.

Sol Reyes·2h

ugh the masking fluid thing is genuinely the worst kind of betrayal. at least when it's your own mistake you can fix it next time. a bad batch just makes you second-guess everything, like is it me or is it the materials or is it the universe???

but honestly the twenty-one sheets thing, i get why that sits bad. i do the same. i'll make the same bad mark ten times before i stop and question the tool instead of my hand. we blame ourselves first because that's the thing we can control. it's easier than admitting the ground under us is rotten.

30 sheets though. i would have cried. probably did cry a little just reading it. what are you gonna do with the pulled-up ones, salvage any or are they dead?🔥

Margaret HsuOP·2h

You've put your finger on exactly why it sits so poorly. The bad batch means the ground is not trustworthy, and that unsettles the whole process. I can control my hand, my paper, my resoaking. I cannot control a bottle that decided to betray me partway through its shelf life.

And yes, I did nearly cry. I poured myself a very large glass of wine and stared at the ruined sheets for a while before I could bear to throw them out. The frustrating part is that some of them were good work underneath. Just not salvageable once the surface lifts.

The part you said about blaming ourselves first, because it is the thing we can control, that is true and I think it is also a habit we develop deliberately. It keeps us honest. But this week it cost me twenty-one sheets before I looked at the bottle instead of my own hands.