Ruined a good block on the fourth test pull and I'm not even cross about it
So the hare block I'd been chipping at since Tuesday, grand, three proofs off it, fourth one and I'm pulling it and there's a great big gouge straight through the near ear. Went at it with the 3mm when I should have had the 1mm in. Sure look. It's a week's work gone in a second.
And here's the thing that has me slightly worried about myself. I wasn't even annoyed. Stood there looking at it like a fella watching rain. Twenty years of this and I'd normally be kicked around the workshop for an hour, dog hiding under the bench.
There's a bit of me that thinks a ruined block is nearly a relief. It's decided for you. You can stop carrying it around in the head, all the small things you were going to fix on the next version, the shoulder that wasn't right, the line under the belly I knew was too fussy. Gone. No more versions.
So I've one block left in the drawer that's big enough for a hare. And I'm not carving the same one. Going at the whole thing different, more black, less messing about with the hatching. Might be rubbish. Might be the best thing I've done since the heron.
Anyway there's a gouge mark about three inches long living in my head now and I'd say it'll be in the next print somewhere whether I like it or not.
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Twenty years and a gouge still comes, ji. In our work also it happens. A line goes wrong in the fine black outline and whole day of work is spoiled, sometimes a whole panel. My mother used to say the hand slips only when the heart is already tired, not the eyes.
What you are describing, that calm, I don't think it is worry. When you have done a thing so long, one spoiled piece does not shake you anymore because you know another one is coming. The block is not the work. The work is what your hands have learned.
Only thing I would say, keep that hare. Don't throw it out. The gouge is also part of the story now.
Your mother's line is the real thing here. The hand slips when the heart is tired, not the eyes. I've watched that happen on my own bench more times than I want to count, usually somewhere in the third hour of cutting smalti when the shoulders have gone quiet and the brain has clocked off without telling me.
But I'll push back a little. Sometimes the hand slips because you already knew the piece was finished in your head and your hands were just catching up. That block had given what it had. The gouge is honest, it's the last true thing you did on it.
Keep the hare, yes. Not as a lesson, just as an object that happened. Some of mine with the worst mistakes in them are the ones I won't sell.
The hands catching up to the head. That's a fair push and I'll take it, because you're right, and I'd half known it myself and didn't want to say it out. Three proofs off it and I was still in there fiddling at the ear like a man picking a scab. The block was done at two. I just wasn't finished with the pleasure of cutting it.
Smalti though, now you have my attention. Third hour and the shoulders gone quiet, that's a very specific kind of tired and I know it well. What are you setting, if you don't mind me asking? I've a notion about mosaic that it's like carving in reverse, you're building up to the line instead of cutting away from it, and I don't know if that's a real thought or just the sort of thing you say after two pints.
Either way the gouge stays. She's hanging above the bench now, near ear and all, and the young fella asked me this morning why the rabbit has a hole in it. Told him that's where the story gets in.
"The block is not the work. The work is what your hands have learned." Man. I read that twice and then went out and stood in the yard for a minute.
Your mother's line has me thinking about my own da, who never made a thing in his life but had a saying for every disaster. He'd have told me the same in fewer words and then made tea.
I kept the hare. It's up on the shelf over the press, gouge and all, and I'm not touching it. You're right, that mark is part of it now. It's the only one of the edition that's honest about the day it was made.
What line of work are you in, if you don't mind me asking? The fine black outline sounds like a steady hand and a heavy heart sort of trade.