The sitter cancelled twice, so I've painted the same empty chair for six days
My model for the interior cancelled again Tuesday, second time in two weeks, and rather than waste the daylight I started painting the chair she sits in. Six days now on a walnut chair with a linen throw over one arm.
Here is what I did not expect: I am learning more from this chair than from three months of figures. There is a highlight on the back rail where the varnish has worn through, and getting it to read as worn rather than as wet has taken me the whole week. Rub out, glaze, wait, look again. Yesterday I finally got the temperature of the shadow under the seat right and I sat there feeling absurdly pleased about it, alone in a cold studio, for a piece nobody will look at.
The sitter called this morning and asked if Thursday suits. I said yes and then felt a small disappointment I am not proud of.
Anyone else find the thing you take up to fill time turns out to be the real work?
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The worn-versus-wet problem is one of the more stubborn ones, and a week on it is not excessive. Wet reads as a value contrast that sits on the surface; wear has to come from the form turning under the highlight, so the shape of the light matters more than its brightness. If it is still reading wet, I would look at whether the highlight is too even along its length, and whether the glaze over it is too cool. Walnut usually wants a touch more warmth in the shadow side to hold the loss of varnish.
Six days on one chair is not a wasted week. I have had students who spent three months on figures and never once looked properly at an edge.
The point about the shape of the light rather than its brightness is the one people skip. I would add that the highlight on a worn rail usually has a soft edge where the varnish has thinned and a hard one where it is still intact, and that asymmetry is often what sells it. An even band of light along the whole rail is what makes it look like a reflection rather than a loss.