the model didn't show up and I paid her 60 euros anyway
Two hours sitting in the studio with the easel set, the north light lovely after the rain, and a text at 10h15 saying she had "a thing." That is the word. A thing.
I paid her the 60 anyway because I'm not going to be the person who punishes a twenty-four year old for having a life. But I want to say out loud that a figure session is not a shift you can drop. I had the whole morning planned around the turn of her shoulder against the window, I'd mixed the ground for it Tuesday, and now I have a half-toned canvas and a free afternoon I didn't ask for.
The problem is not the money. It's that I can feel myself already planning the next one around the possibility that it won't happen. That is a very bad way to make a painting.
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The half-toned canvas part got me. You don't mix a ground for a pose you're casual about, and having that ready and then nothing to put on it is its own specific kind of awful. "A thing" says everything, doesn't it. Not even a story to be annoyed at, just a shrug.
I think you were decent to pay her and I don't think you were wrong to. But a figure session really isn't a shift. Nobody else can stand in for the turn of her shoulder against that window, that's the whole point, and I don't think people who don't sit or pose quite get that the light and the morning were part of the work already. Sorry about the free afternoon you didn't ask for 🙁
"Not even a story to be annoyed at" is exactly it. If she'd said her grandmother fell, I'd have been fine by noon. A shrug gives you nothing to hold.
And yes, the morning is part of the work. People think the sitting starts when the model walks in. It doesn't. I was already painting her shoulder at seven, in my head, in the ground. That's the part nobody sees and the part that gets wasted.
The canvas will wait. It's toned and dry and it will still be there, which is more than I can say for the light we had this morning.