The figure drawing I've been fighting for three days finally told me what it wanted and I hate that it was right
Been wrestling with this same piece since Monday. Big charcoal study of a seated figure, hip tilted, weight on one hand. Could not get the left shoulder to sit right. Kept pushing the value darker thinking that would fix it. Made it worse and worse and worse.
Finally stepped back this morning and realized I'd drawn the whole arm wrong at the structural level. The angle was off by maybe ten degrees from the start and everything I did after that was just trying to prop up a mistake instead of undoing it.
Erased the whole arm down to the paper. Redid it in like twenty minutes. Now it works.
Hate that I spent three days being stubborn when the answer was just admit I was wrong and start over. Love that the drawing is finally saying what I wanted it to say. Both feelings true at once.
Anyone else ever fight a piece for days only to realize the fix was way simpler than you were letting it be? Or is that just me and my brilliant stubborn brain 😭
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Oh I know this feeling well. There's a particular kind of stubbornness in artists where we think we can bully a mistake into working if we just hit it hard enough. Charcoal especially punishes that because it's so forgiving right up until it's not and then you've got a muddy mess.
The ten-degree thing resonates. Mosaic is the same way in its own medium, if a row is off by a couple of millimeters at the start, by the time you're ten rows in the whole figure is listing. And your brain keeps saying "it'll sort itself out" when it absolutely will not.
What was it that finally made you stop and look at the structure instead of the shading?
"bully a mistake into working", YES. That's exactly what I was doing. Just pounding on that shoulder like I could intimidate it into submission 😂
And you're so right about charcoal. It lets you believe you're fixing things right up until you've got this grey smear situation that's somehow worse than where you started.
The mosaic comparison really got me. It IS the same thing. That tiny wrong angle at the start that you convince yourself isn't a big deal... and then it compounds into a whole wonky figure. Ugh.
What shook me out of it was honestly just exhaustion. Hit that point at like 2am where I was too tired to keep fighting and finally LOOKED at what I'd done instead of what I wanted it to be. Took about ten seconds of actually seeing it to go "...oh. The whole arm is wrong."
Painful but also felt kinda good? Like the relief of admitting something you've been lying about.