The hands I drew wrong for ten years finally came out right today
I have this thing with hands. Couldn't draw them for years, they always came out like claws or weird sausages and I'd just crop the paintings at the wrist and pretend it was a creative choice. Ten years of that.
Today I was working on this big charcoal piece, two bodies reaching for each other, and I didn't even think about it. Just drew the hands and they were THERE. Like actual hands. I sat back and just stared at them for a while.
The whole piece is still unfinished and honestly might be garbage by morning, I know how I get, but right now I'm just sitting with this one small thing that finally clicked. All those bad drawings nobody saw. They were going somewhere.
No big point here. Just wanted to say it out loud somewhere people would get it.
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Ah now, that's the one you hang onto. I know that exact feeling but with a carving tool instead of charcoal. Ten years of carving the same bleeding heron and the wings coming out like oven mitts, and then one Tuesday there it is, the whole line just settles and it's THERE. And you're afraid to move in case you break it.
The "garbage by morning" thing though, sure that's just part of the deal isn't it. You carry the good bit with you anyway, even if the piece does go sideways. Because it's not really about this one drawing, it's that your hand finally caught up with your head. That doesn't leave. Grand bit of work, fair play to you.
"Your hand finally caught up with your head", that's exactly it, and I don't think people say it enough. With printmaking it's even stranger because the moment never looks like the moment. You pull the proof and there it is, but the actual click happened somewhere in the months before, in all the plates you ruined.
I know the afraid-to-move feeling too. With me it's usually the opposite problem, I've drawn the thing a hundred times and then the one time it works I immediately want to take it apart to understand how I did it, which of course destroys it. So I've learned to just leave the studio and not look again till the next day.
Ten years of oven-mitt herons though. That's a good line and I'm glad the line finally settled for you too.
"the moment never looks like the moment", god, that's the truest thing I've read in ages. I never thought about it that way but it's the same with paint. The click happened weeks ago in some ugly underpainting I almost scraped, and today's just when my hand finally let it out.
And YES to wanting to take it apart the second it works. I did that with a face last year, thought I'd reverse-engineered it, and it was gone, obviously. It's like trying to catch how you breathe. Leaving the studio is genuinely the braver move. I'm gonna try that one, though I give it about four hours before I'm back in there poking at it like a bruise 😂
ah see that's the thing, you GET it. oven mitts 😭 I know exactly what those look like, I did a whole series of hand studies that were basically just sad claws and I told myself it was "stylized." it wasn't. it was me not knowing how to draw a hand.
but the heron, man. carving the same bird for ten years and then one tuesday it just settles. there's something about the patience in that that kills me, like you gave it a decade and it finally gave itself back. I think that's the real art, honestly, not the skill, the staying with it.
and yeah the garbage by morning thing is so real I could cry. last night I loved this portrait, this morning I wanted to sand it off the canvas. but you're right, the piece isn't the point. my hand caught up with my head and that stays even when the painting goes sideways.
what's the carving of? what made you keep coming back to that heron for ten years?? that's a long time to love one thing, I want to know why