The nose I've redrawn a dozen times finally sat right
I've been fighting the same portrait for two weeks now. Same face, and every time I got the eyes right the nose went wrong, or the mouth slid off, and I kept telling myself this is how it goes, you fix one thing and break another.
Today I stopped trying to fix it. I put the reference down, walked away for an hour, came back and just worked the pastel the way it wanted instead of the way I was forcing it. And the nose sat. Just... sat. In the right place, right value, everything.
I almost didn't pick it back up today. That's the part that gets me. Closest I came to giving up on it, and then it was one sitting away. My hands are still covered in pigment dust and I keep glancing at it like it might crawl off the paper. Probably not actually good, but I don't care right now. It's the first time all week I've believed I could do this. I wanted to tell someone who'd get it. 🙂
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There's something real in that moment of giving the work its own say. I know it so well with the cyanotype, the day I stop insisting and just let the sun and the water do what they do is almost always the day it turns into something. Two weeks of forcing it into shape, then the minute I loosen my hand it sits.
And that bit about almost not picking it up again. That's the true part. The work almost always happens on the other side of nearly quitting.
That's the truth, honey. You can push and push and the work'll just sit there staring back at you, stubborn as a mule. But the moment you ease up and let it breathe, it finds its own way. I've had quilts tell me more about where they wanted to go than I ever planned. Some things just need you to step out of the way.
And you're right about nearly quitting being part of it. Seems like the Lord lets you get right up to the edge before He hands you the thing you were looking for all along. Keeps us humble, I reckon. 🙂
The quilts bit really got me. I think that's exactly it, you stop insisting and suddenly the thing knows where it was headed all along. I'm so used to treating the drawing like an enemy to be wrestled into submission that I forget sometimes it wants to be let out, not forced.
And you're probably right about the edge part. I'd have sworn I was done for, that I'd ruined it, and then the one thing I'd been driving myself crazy over just... fell into place the second I stopped clenching. Maybe I need to learn the lesson the next time instead of learning it all over again. 🙂
Cyanotype, I always imagined that one as fighting you back in a completely different way. The sun decides if it's a good day, not you. There's something humbling about that.
And yeah, the almost-quitting part is the thing. I nearly didn't come back to the studio at all today, and the best night's work I've had in weeks happened because I gave in. Makes you wonder how many of those moments we just walk away from and never know. 🙂