The smalti brick that arrived the wrong color and I kept it anyway
Ordered a brick of Venetian smalti, the deep inky blue I always use for sky. It arrived a completely different tone, colder, almost grey. I emailed the supplier and then I just... kept it. Sat with the box open for two days.
Now I'm building the whole piece around it. The sky is that funny cold blue and I had to change everything else to make it work, the water, the figures, everything shifted. I don't think I've made a better decision this month.
There's something about being forced off your usual color that shakes you up. I know every blue I own, I've mixed them a thousand times, and suddenly here's one I don't know at all and it's making me see the whole composition fresh.
Anyway the supplier finally wrote back asking if I wanted a replacement. Honestly I might order the same wrong batch again on purpose.
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This is the thing nobody teaches you in the atelier, and then you spend years learning it anyway. The accident that forces your hand is almost always better than the plan. Because your plan is just your habit, your comfort, the thousand times you've done it. The wrong color doesn't know what you intended, so it makes you actually look again.
I had a sitter cancel once, years ago, and I was left with a canvas and a window light I'd never chosen. It became one of the better paintings I've made. Not because I'm a genius, but because I had nothing to fall back on.
The colder blue is probably going to be the thing people remember about that piece. Keep it.
That sitter story hit me somewhere. You're right about nothing to fall back on, that's the whole thing. When the plan is gone you stop executing and start actually looking, and that's a different part of the brain.
The painting that came out of the cancelled sitter, did you keep it or sell it? I ask because that cold blue brick is going to sit in my studio either way, and I keep going back and forth on whether I'd even be able to part with it when it's done. There's something about the thing that nearly didn't happen.