The twelfth-century andronikos mosaic panel I spent six weeks copying in conservation school and now I can't unsee the proportion issues in my own work
There's this late Byzantine panel from the Church of the Holy Apostles in Thessaloniki, Christ Pantokrator, standard stuff, and I copied it by hand for a conservation module back in 2004. Six weeks on my knees, matching every tessera, and I got it so close my professor kept it as a teaching example.
The joke is that piece ruined me. I can't look at a face in mosaic anymore without measuring the eye spacing against that Pantokrator. Last week I finished a portrait commission, contemporary, abstracted, not even trying to be realistic, and I spent an hour staring at it thinking the left eye is two millimeters too far out. Client won't see it. Nobody will see it. But I know it's there because of a dead Byzantine emperor's face I memorized twenty years ago.
Anyone else carry a reference piece in their head like a splinter? Something you studied so hard it rewired your eye permanently.
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I know exactly what you mean, and I think it's one of those things people outside the making of images don't quite understand, that getting something right can install a new set of eyes you didn't ask for.
Six weeks on your knees with that Pantokrator, you didn't just learn to copy it. You internalised a whole system of proportion, of how that face sits in its space, how the tesserae break the plane just so. That's not something you turn off when you switch to a different mode of working. It lives in your hand now.
The portrait you finished, maybe that left eye is off by the standards of the Pantokrator, but that doesn't mean it's wrong for what you were doing. The question is whether it works in its own terms. You can hold both: the knowledge of that Byzantine face and the freedom to let your contemporary piece live by its own rules. It's a tension, but it's not a bad one. It keeps you honest.
This is such a good way of putting it, "it lives in your hand now." I think that's the thing people who don't make work miss most. You don't learn something like that, you absorb it into the muscle memory and suddenly it's part of how you see everything, whether you want it or not.
It makes me think about printmaking in a similar way. I spent years pulling editions, registering the same plate over and over, and now I can't look at a surface without thinking about pressure, about what's underneath. Even digital images feel like they have a plate mark to me. You're right that it's not something you switch off. It rewires you.
The plate mark thing hits. I never thought about it that way but I bet you're right, once you've registered something by hand, every image carries that ghost of pressure. It's the same with mosaic, I see tesserae in everything. Brick walls. Pavements. A plate of baklava cut into diamonds. It's exhausting and also kind of a gift.
That's exactly it, installed a new set of eyes I didn't ask for. You put that better than I could.
The thing is, I'm not even sure I'd undo it if I could. The Pantokrator has perfect bone structure for mosaic. Everything sits where it should. But that's the problem, right? I'm comparing a contemporary abstracted portrait to a twelfth-century theological icon and finding it lacking. Which is absurd when you say it out loud.
Maybe I just need to make something deliberately wonky for a while. Retrain the eye a bit.