Okay so I've painted the same window in my apartment maybe eleven times now, the one over the fire escape with the bad caulk line and the traffic light bleeding red onto the sill at night, and I've been fighting the mullions for months. Masking fluid, frisket, tape, all of it, and it always came out with these horrible hard edges that made the whole thing look like a sticker. Dead. Technically clean and completely dead, which is worse than sloppy, honestly.

Painted it Sunday without any of that. Just negative space and a lot of praying. Hellebore white and a wash of quinacridone rose for the light coming through, lifting with a damp sable where I needed the bar of the frame back. Lost two of the panes entirely, one of the verticals is crooked by like a millimeter and a half, and the whole thing breathes in a way none of the other ten do. I don't know if I'm relieved or furious that the tool I trusted was the problem.

My old figure drawing teacher used to say the medium you reach for to make it safe is the one that makes it boring and I thought that was a load of shit at the time.

Anyway I'm never buying frisket again and I want to hear from people who do crisp architectural edges how you keep them alive because I clearly have no idea