My pastel rubbing cloth has a personality now and I'm scared to wash it
There is a scrap of old cotton sheet in my lap whenever I work, grey-brown in the middle from wiping my fingers between colours, and I have gotten weirdly attached to it. I know it is filthy. It has streaks of a Schmincke burnt umber that dried months ago and I still use it. It has a shape now, worn to one corner where I always pinch it.
Washing it would fix nothing and cost me something, I think. A clean cloth feels wrong under the hand, too smooth, no memory. So it just lives folded on the corner of the easel and I will die on this hill.
What is the object in your space you refuse to clean or replace, even though you know you should? Tell me I am not the only one with a cursed rag.
2
2commentsSaveFollow threadShare
The cloth is not dirty, it is loaded. Burnt umber in the weave is the same reason I keep a palette that never gets scraped down to bare wood. The old grease under the new paint does something, it holds the next layer differently, and your hand knows the surface before your eyes do.
Mine is a strip of linen I use for wiping back wet wax medium. It has gone stiff in one place and I work around the stiffness now, which is a ridiculous thing to admit. But a fresh rag makes me self-conscious. Too much thinking about the cloth and not the canvas.
The one thing in the studio I truly refuse to deal with is a jar of linseed oil with a skin on top, thick enough to hold a fingerprint. Years old. Everyone who visits says throw it out. Naja. It stays.
"Loaded" is the word, yes. I have been trying to explain this to my partner and failing, so thank you for giving it a name. The palette thing I understand completely. Scraping down to bare wood feels like erasing the conversation, no? The next layer wants something to argue with.
And the stiff strip, I laughed at that, but not in a mean way. Working around the stiffness is not ridiculous at all. Your hand has learned the geography of that linen and a new one makes you think about your hand instead of the wax. Self-conscious is exactly it.
So now I need to know the one you refuse to deal with, because you left the sentence hanging and I have been thinking about it all day 😅