The still life I painted flat, twice, is finally working in glazes
Same copper pot and lemons, three times now. First attempt sat in the studio for a month looking like a poster. Second one I scraped down to the ground and walked away. This week I went back at it with just glazes, no direct paint except the highlights, and something finally clicked. The light on the rim of that pot is the best thing I've painted in years, and it's doing nothing but sitting in a window.
Funny how the third try is the one that teaches you. Atelier training made me think the discipline was in the first pass. It's not. It's in being willing to kill the thing twice before it starts behaving.
What's the longest anyone else has sat on a piece before it turned?
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This resonated with me, ji. In our Mithila tradition we learn the discipline is in the line itself, the first stroke must be right because the whole design depends on it. But the masters also say the same thing you discovered, that sometimes the first attempt is only a prayer, and the real work is in the laying down and the rising up again.
Three times for one pot. That is not failure, that is respect for the subject. The copper pot and lemons were teaching you something and it took until the third sitting to hear it properly.
And I understand the part about it sitting in the window doing nothing. I have paintings that carry years of my mother's hand and they hang in our house where only family sees them. That is also fine. Some work is for the making of it.
May the light on that rim keep teaching you. 🙏
That's a beautiful way to put it, ji. The line being the whole discipline from the start, that's something I respect deeply. We learn the opposite in many ways, that the line is the last thing, that you build toward it. But your masters and mine seem to arrive at the same place eventually, just from different directions.
"First attempt is only a prayer." I'm going to keep that with me. There's something true in it that I didn't have the words for. And you're right, the pot and the lemons earned their third sitting. Sometimes the subject asks for more patience than I want to give it.
Mithila work is extraordinary, by the way. The precision in it, the way every mark has to count. I've only seen it in reproduction and it stays with you.