I spent three hours yesterday correcting a single leaf

Yesterday I was working on a study of a single branch of Amelanchier canadensis, and I spent the better part of three hours painting and then re-painting one leaf. The first attempt was technically fine -- the proportions were right, the color was in the right range -- but it was dead. It had no life in it. The edge was too hard, the transition from the green to the reddish tip was abrupt, and I knew I would see it every time I looked at the painting.

I painted it out, let it dry, and started again. Better, but the veins were too heavy. Painted it out again. Third time I got it right, and I cannot tell you why the third one worked when the first two didn't. The difference is maybe half a shade in the wetness of the brush, a fraction of a second in the timing of a lift. But you can feel it.

My husband came in and asked how my day was. I said good, I finished one leaf. He is used to this by now.

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Dani Okafor·2h

Honestly this is the most relatable thing I've read all week 😭 People who don't paint don't get that "technically fine" and "alive" are two completely different things and the gap between them is HOURS of just... staring and redoing and hoping your next attempt doesn't also suck. I've absolutely done the thing where I paint something out, let it dry, try again, hate it, paint it out AGAIN, and the whole time you're like "this is a normal amount of time to spend on one square inch of paper" lol.

The leaf that made you stop and fix it is probably the one that makes the whole painting feel real now though. That's the tradeoff nobody talks about, you can't rush life into something.

Mira Vey·1h

the "this is a normal amount of time" part is so real. i had a piece last year where i redrew one hand six times across three days and every time i told myself i was being ridiculous and every time i knew i wasn't going to stop until it stopped bothering me. you just know when something's not right and there's no shortcut past it.

Margaret HsuOP·1h

Six times over three days. That takes a certain kind of stubbornness, and I mean that as a compliment. The people who don't paint would call it obsessive, but they're the ones who settle for things that are almost right and wonder why the work never satisfies them. You knew exactly what you were doing.

Margaret HsuOP·1h

You've put your finger on something important. "Technically fine" and "alive", that distinction is the whole craft, really. Anyone can learn to mix the right green and put it in the right shape, but making it breathe is something else entirely.

I'm glad you understand the painting out and starting again. Most people would have stopped after the first attempt and called it good enough. But you know, and I know, that you will always see the difference. That's the burden of caring, I suppose.

Giulia Bruno·1h

This is actually interesting to me because in printmaking you don't really get to do this. You make your marks and that's it, the plate is what it is, you can't chase a single leaf for three hours because the whole logic of the medium is committing. So I read this and I think: what's lost when you can't do that? But also what's gained when you're forced to let something be technically fine and move on. I'm not sure either approach is better, they just produce different relationships to "alive."

Tomáš Havel·50m

This is a good way to put it. I work in assemblage so I'm somewhere between you two, I can swap a piece out or reposition something for weeks, but the objects themselves are fixed, I can't refine them. A rusted hinge stays a rusted hinge. So I'm in this odd middle where I can fidget with the arrangement forever but each individual thing is what it is, for better or worse.

What the painter has is illusionistic control. What you have is a kind of honesty. Neither one is superior but they're asking different questions of the person making the work.

Margaret HsuOP·18m

That's a really interesting way to put it. I'd never quite thought about assemblage in those terms, but you're right, there's a finality to each object that you have to work with or around. The hinge can't be smoothed or softened. It either works in the arrangement or it doesn't, and you have to find the arrangement that honours what it is.

I suppose with painting you can bully the thing into submission, which is both a liberty and a trap. You can keep chasing an ideal that maybe didn't need to be chased.

Margaret HsuOP·58m

That's a thoughtful comparison and I think you're right that neither approach is inherently better. There's something admirable about the discipline of committing, it forces a different kind of attention on the front end, doesn't it. You have to see it clearly before you act because you won't get to unpick it.

I suppose the trade-off is that in watercolour I can arrive at a kind of truth through revision that I couldn't reach in a single pass. But I can also see how the pressure of finality might produce a different sort of liveliness, an urgency that revision can sometimes sand away. I've certainly overworked plenty of pieces past the point where they were alive into something stiff and over-handled.