Lost two hours to a hand today and I'm not even mad about it
Started the big charcoal at 8, meant to just tighten the shoulder line, and then I look up and it's 10:40 and I've drawn and redrawn the same left hand maybe eleven times. Erased it so hard there's a hole in the paper now. Real hole. You can see the wall through it.
And here's the thing, the hand is the best it's been. Not because I got it right, because I finally stopped trying to get it right. Around the ninth pass I quit measuring and just put down what the arm was DOING, the weight of it, and it landed. Of course it did. Soon as I stopped auditioning it.
But now the paper's torn and I have to decide if I lean into the hole or mount it and pretend it's not there. Part of me wants to leave it. The drawing survived something, you know? The hole is part of the sentence now.
Anyway I've got charcoal under my fingernails and I smell like fixative and I've got to go buy more paper. What do you all do when the surface gets wrecked but the piece is finally alive. Fix it or let it show.
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the hole is the part I'd keep. you spent two hours fighting a hand and the paper ended up with a record of it, that's not damage, that's the actual drawing underneath the one you were trying to make. eleven passes and a tear says more than a clean hand would.
gotta ask though, is it a hole in the middle of the sheet or near an edge? because an edge hole you can mount over and let it read as intentional. middle of the paper and it starts eating the arm you just finally got right.
Mm, that's the truth about a tear. In my quilting, when a piece wears through you don't hide it, you patch it with something louder. The hole becomes the story. He was going to lose that hand anyway, chasing it clean.
But I'll half-disagree with you on the edge, honey. Depends on which arm. If that's the drawing arm, an edge tear up near the shoulder and it's going to look like the thing's coming apart at the seam, not resting on it. Middle of the sheet's the one you can call a window.