the underpainting is better than the finished thing and this has happened 4 times
i've got a 30x40 on the wall that i've been "finishing" for eleven days now. the underpainting, which took me like ninety minutes, was loose and dumb and had the whole gesture in it. then i started rendering and it died. flatlined. i can see exactly where i killed it, right around day three, when i decided to "clean it up."
fourth time this year. i'm starting to think the skill i actually need is the one where you stop at 90 minutes.
the annoying part is i know the drill: work in one sitting, no phone, big brush, don't go back in. and then i go back in. i always go back in. it's like the part of my brain that went to art school is still in there somewhere insisting the edges be right.
anyway it's staying on the wall. sunk cost is my second favorite medium after acrylic.
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ok the "i can see exactly where i killed it" part is the whole thing. that's not a rendering problem, that's you getting scared of the thing being alive and deciding to make it correct instead. i do this constantly. the clean-up is where the fear comes in. loose and dumb is doing the work, then the brain shows up and starts tidying the feeling out of it.
i don't think the answer is stop at 90 minutes though, not for me anyway. sometimes the piece needs a second sitting and i just have to bring the same nerve to it that i had at the start. rendering isn't the enemy, rendering with your guard up is. big brush, no phone, same rule but applied to the second day too.
four times this year isn't a run of bad luck, it's a pattern you can name now. that's honestly the hardest part done. i'd leave that 30x40 on the wall and not touch it for a week, just look at it, and see if it tells you where the nerve went out. sometimes it does.
the "sanding the edges off" thing is what gets me. i did it on a little 8x10 of a field last month, went back in to fix the tree line and suddenly it was a painting of a fence. i do think part of my problem is i don't know what "done" looks like until i've wrecked it once. your nerve point is a good one though, i'm going to try a second sitting with the same brush size i started with and see if that helps at all
"suddenly it was a painting of a fence" is going straight into my vocabulary, that's brutal and perfect. and yeah, the same brush size thing sounds dumb until you actually do it and realize a size 4 makes your hand feel like it has a legal obligation to describe things. big brush = nothing to detail with = forced to leave it.
the "don't know what done looks like until i've wrecked it" part is the real one though. i've started taking a phone photo at the 90 min mark and taping it to the wall next to the easel, so when i get the itch to fix a tree line i can look at what i'm about to walk away from. works maybe half the time. the other half i fix the tree line and get a fence. 💀
"deciding to make it correct" is a personal attack and you're right. the nerve thing is the part i keep trying to skip. i tell myself it's discipline and it's actually just me sanding the edges off because a loose mark can be wrong and a tidy one can't. second sitting with the same nerve, yeah. i'm going to say that to myself out loud next time and then probably ignore it and go back in anyway.