Know when the stone tells you to stop

Spent the morning on a piece of Indiana limestone I've been working for two weeks. Block was clean, good color, no veins. I kept pushing on it. Refining a curve that didn't need refining. At noon I stepped back and saw what I'd done to it. Took that curve too far. Now I'm chasing it back.

Thirty years in and I still do this. The stone tells you when you're done and I keep going anyway because stopping feels like I'm being lazy. Had a mentor who'd slap his hands on his thighs and walk away mid-afternoon. I thought he was slacking. He wasn't. He just knew.

Now I spend half my time carving and the other half wishing I'd walked away an hour earlier. If you're at the point where you're just fiddling, put the tool down. The work is already done. Fiddling is how you ruin it.

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Elin Holm·1h

That bit about stopping feeling like being lazy is the whole thing, isn't it. I work in paper, not stone, and I have the same reflex. There's a moment where the piece is right and my hands know it, but I push another hour because leaving early feels like theft. Then I've gone and wrecked the quiet thing I had.

Your mentor walking off mid-afternoon, I believe that. It takes more nerve to stop than to keep going. The work tells you and most of us just don't trust the voice.

Hope the curve comes back. Sometimes it does, sometimes you live with what the over-work left you.

Giulia Bruno·1h

"The work tells you and most of us just don't trust the voice." That's exactly it. In printmaking the same thing shows up differently because the press does the deciding for you sometimes, you pull a proof and there it is, done, and you still go back to the plate to fiddle. I've over-bitten plates chasing a mark that was already perfect on the third proof.

There's something about the stopping that feels like failure, like the room got quiet and you didn't earn it. But it's the one skill nobody teaches. You can learn to draw, to carve, to mix, but knowing when to walk away, that takes years and most of us waste them.

I hope the curve comes back too. But also, sometimes the over-worked thing ends up being the more honest portrait of where you were that day. At least that's what I tell myself.

Roman PetrakOP·32m

Over-bitten a plate more times than I want to count. You're right, nobody teaches the stopping. You can teach someone every part of the craft but not the moment they should put the tool down. That one you just have to live through enough times wrecking good work to learn.

Acrylic's a different animal and I think that's why painters fight it harder. With stone there's a hard line, you've got nowhere to go past it. With paint there's no wall so you just keep pushing into the smear. Sounds like you've hit that wall the hard way too.

Roman PetrakOP·40m

Paper's its own kind of unforgiving. At least with stone there's a limit, the material eventually tells you no. In printmaking you said the press decides sometimes. With paper you've got nothing between you and overworking it.

You're right about the nerve. People think quitting takes less. It takes more. I've stood in the studio at two in the afternoon with a clean piece in front of me and had to talk myself into putting the hammer down.

As for the curve. I think the overwork took it. I'll know tomorrow when it's dry. Sometimes you live with it and sometimes you learn to call it a different piece. Both are fine. One's just cheaper.

What do you make in paper? Printmaking or hand paper work?

Teddy Lin·1h

man this is so real. i paint, acrylic, and there's this exact same moment but it's weird because with paint you can always add more but you can't always take it back cleanly. i've wrecked pieces the same way you wrecked that curve, just pushing past the point where it was done because stopping somehow felt like I was cheating on it.

the mentor thing hits too. I had this teacher who'd put the brush down mid-stroke, not even finish the line, and just walk off. drove me insane. thought he was being precious. turns out he was just listening better than me.

two weeks though. that's brutal. i hope you get the curve back or at least get close enough that only you know it's not the same. that's usually how it goes for me anyway lol

Niall Doherty·36m

You've said it. That "stopping feels like cheating" thing, sure that's the whole bloody game. I carve lino and there's no going back at all, the knife takes the line and that's that, so I've got no choice but to trust the moment it's right. And I still don't. I've pulled editions where the first three proofs were perfect and I kept breaking the block chasing some notion that wasn't there.

That teacher of yours putting the brush down mid-stroke though. God. I'd have been watching the clock, thinking the man had somewhere better to be. But you're right, they were just hearing something we hadn't tuned in to yet. Twenty years on I'm still trying to train myself to walk away at the good moment instead of the finished-looking one.

Two weeks is a rough one, no two ways about it. But there's a bit of grace in it too, you know the block well enough now to know exactly where you went wrong and exactly how to find your way back. That's not nothing. Most of the time I don't even know what I did, I just know I've wrecked it.

What were you working on, if you don't mind me asking? The thing you pushed too far. Throwing you a bit of solidarity, I'm mid-way through telling myself the same hare doesn't need another version and sure I've already bought the new lino. 🙂

Roman PetrakOP·32m

Acrylic's got that cruel part where you can always add but the removal smears. At least with stone when I overshoot I can carve back to the line. Paint you're stuck arguing with the last layer.

That teacher walking off mid-stroke, I know exactly the type. Makes you furious until you realize they weren't being precious, they just knew the line was already said. Same hands-on-the-thighs move my mentor had. Took me a decade to see it for what it was.

Two weeks is the hard part. The longer you're on a piece the harder it is to hear anything over your own doubts. That curve I'm chasing back, I'll probably end up where I started and that's fine. Lesson costs the time or it doesn't stick.