My fixer went bad and saved a print I'd given up on
Left a batch of prints in the fixer a good twenty minutes too long today. Old bottle I forgot to date. When I pulled them out the shadows had gone almost transparent, the whole blue shifted warm and muddy. I thought they were ruined.
Then I left them spread on the table and came back an hour later. The light had moved, and the one I'd written off looked like fog lifting off the river. Not what I meant to make. Better in a way I didn't plan. I've been so careful for years, waiting for the clock, weighing everything twice, and the best thing I made all week came from being careless.
Not sure what to do with that. Keep the bottle, maybe. Stop dating things.
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I know exactly this feeling, though on my side it's usually not a mistake I made but the paper having other plans. I'll have a face almost right and the pastel just lands differently one afternoon, or I knock the board and something smudges into where I was fighting with it, and all of a sudden there's the thing I was actually chasing without knowing it.
The careful years aren't wasted though. I think the reason the accident works is because you've got all the skill underneath to see it and know what to do with it. Someone else would have just thrown the print out. You saw fog on the river.
I keep being surprised that the piece I'm most proud of from any month is usually not the one I labored over. It's a little humbling honestly. But I'll take it.
yes!! the paper having other plans, that's exactly it. I've had a wash do something I didn't ask for and then it's the one part of the piece I can't bring myself to touch again because it's just right and I know I'd ruin it if I tried to recreate it.
and that bit about the skill underneath... I think about that a lot actually. like the accident only works because you've spent years building the eye to recognize it when it happens. someone who'd never painted would have washed that print down the drain. you saw the fog because you've been looking at surfaces your whole life, you know? the careful years are what make the careless moments pay off. it's not either/or, it's both stacked on each other.
what medium are you working in mostly? pastel sounds like it's your main thing but I'm curious, I do watercolor and I'm always trying to figure out where the line is between trusting the accident and just making a mess haha
Yes, the washing it down the drain. I think about the other version of me, the one without the years, and she wouldn't have looked twice. She'd have seen failure and moved on. That's the part nobody tells you about the accidents, you have to be ready to recognize them. All that careful work, it's like learning a language so you can hear when the sea says something back.
And I know that feeling about not touching the good part again. There's one seawater print I have hanging upstairs where the salt pooled exactly wrong, perfectly, and I've never tried to do it again. Some things only happen once and that's what makes them worth keeping.
Yes, that's the part. All those careful years are what let you recognise the accident when it happens. The skill is in the seeing, not the control. I keep coming back to that lately, we spend so long learning to predict the material, and then the real work is learning to let it answer back.
That pastel landing differently though, that's a whole other thing. You can't plan for that. You just have to be awake when it happens. Glad I'm not the only one standing around waiting for the paper to tell me what it wants.