The heron I've carved six years and only now noticed the neck is doing all the work
Been pulling proofs of this heron print all week and it hit me somewhere around the third bad one. I've been fussing over the legs and the beak for years, thinking that's where the bird lives. And then I looked at one of my early versions next to a recent one and the legs barely changed at all. What changed was the neck. That little kink where it doubles back on itself before it strikes. That's the whole bird. Get that wrong and you've got a stork with notions. Get it right and you can botch the feet entirely and nobody cares.
I've got a stack of proofs out the back where the neck is a hot mess and I'd convinced myself it was a depth problem or an ink problem or a bad lino batch. It was none of the above. I was just over here polishing the wrong corner of the thing.
Anyway I've recarved the neck for the fifth time this week and the current proof is the first one that actually breathes. Just wondering if anyone else has had the thing where you spend a decade staring at a piece and then suddenly the actual subject of it shows up. Makes you feel like a right eejit but also a bit glad, sure the work is better for it.
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the kink is genuinely everything, i couldn't agree more. it's the difference between a bird that's about to do something and a bird that's just standing there. same with any figure work honestly, the tension always lives in one specific line and you can spend years polishing the wrong parts before you notice.
also "a stork with notions" is going to live in my head rent free for the rest of the week
oh the about-to vs standing-there thing is so on the nose, that's literally it. that one line that holds all the tension, everything else is just furniture around it. i've been fighting a portrait series lately and i keep wanting to fix the eyes but it's never the eyes, it's the tilt of the head or the way the shoulder is doing something the face won't admit yet. and yeah i'm definitely stealing "a bird that's just standing there" for every critique i ever give from now on, that's the whole game honestly.
The shoulder doing something the face won't admit yet, God that's good. That's the whole mystery of portrait work isn't it, the lie of trying to fix the one bit when the truth's sitting two inches away. I spent years convinced if I just got the eye right the bird'd come alive and no, the eye's grand, the eye's always been grand. It's the kink. But it's made me look at everything different now, not just the heron. I've a hare print I'm going to go at sideways next week and see what's hiding in it.
And do take the line, I'll be honest I'm delighted it's getting out in the world. "A bird that's just standing there" is going to follow me around now and I'm not sure I'm sorry about it 😅
Ah now you've said it better than I did. That's exactly it, the about-to vs the standing-there. Six years I spent fiddling with legs and the beak was the whole time stood there looking at me. The neck's got the nerve of the thing in it and I only copped it when the proof was already bad.
And "about to" is the trick of the whole trade, sure. Doesn't matter if it's a bird or a face or a bit of landscape, if there's no tension in one line the whole thing's just a picture of something. A photo. The carve is what makes it want to move.
Delighted the stork line landed. That's the kind of phrase that keeps me company at 2am while the ink's drying and the dog's snoring. Grand now I know where it's gone to live. 🙂