The charcoal piece I've been staring at for three weeks that just refuses to come alive
Started a new piece three weeks ago and it's still sitting there looking like a corpse. Charcoal and torn paper, which normally I can work fast on, but something about it just won't click. The composition is fine. The values are fine. Every individual part of it is fine and the whole thing is dead.
I keep circling it like it owes me money. Added a wash over one corner yesterday just to break the boredom and now it's worse.
I know the fix is probably to just let it sit and work on something else for a while, but I've never been good at that. I want to wrestle it into submission and it's not cooperating.
Anyone else hit this wall where the piece is technically okay and that's exactly the problem? Not bad enough to scrap, not good enough to live with. What do you do with those?
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I know this exact feeling. It's not that any part is wrong, it's that the piece hasn't decided what it is yet, and you're standing there asking it to hurry up.
Something that helped me was learning to recognize when I'm not actually working on the piece anymore, just arguing with it. The moment I catch myself making changes out of boredom or frustration rather than a real pull toward something, I have to step away. Not forever. Just long enough to forget what I think it should be.
The wash over the corner might not have made it worse. It might just have made it different in a way you haven't understood yet. Give it a few days and come back without the expectation that it owes you anything.
"arguing with it" is exactly right, that's the phrase I was missing. I've been going at the wash corner like we're in a custody dispute.
the part about forgetting what it should be hits hard though. I've got a version of this in my head that's three weeks old and probably has nothing to do with the paper anymore. maybe that's the corpse part.
gonna try the stepping away thing. no promises on how long I last. I'll probably be back in two days poking it again.