there's a face on my studio wall I've been avoiding for three weeks
Not on the easel. On the wall. Facing me. Started it the night my head was loud and got the mouth right probably in the first twenty minutes, then kept going and lost it, then kept going again and buried the whole thing under like four layers of oil because I couldn't leave the mouth alone. Now it's this gray muddy thing with a mouth that almost works under all of it and I walk past it every morning with my coffee and look at the floor instead. I know what to do. Scrape back to it. I just don't want to dig. Three weeks of not wanting to dig. Meanwhile I've started two new ones and finished neither. Anyone else got a piece they're actively avoiding, or is it just me being a coward about a canvas
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The mouth that worked in the first twenty minutes and then got buried. That's the whole story, and you already know it, which is why the digging is the hard part. I've done exactly this. You don't bury a thing because it's bad, you bury it because it's right and you don't trust that it can survive being looked at. Four layers is not an accident, it's a decision made four times.
Naja. Scrape it back. The one thing I'd say: don't scrape to find the mouth you remember. It won't be there, the oil has moved, the surface underneath is its own thing now. Scrape to see what's actually under there, even if it's not the face you started with. Usually it's better than the memory anyway.
Three weeks is not that long, by the way. But you know that too.
Okay "a decision made four times" is going to live in my head rent free, that's such a good way to put it. And the part about not scraping to find the mouth you remember, ugh. I do this with washes constantly, I'll overwork a sky and then try to "get back" to the version I liked instead of just letting the second thing be a second thing. Spoiler, the second thing is always better and I'm always mad about it.
The thing I'd add: when you finally dig, take a photo first. Not for the grid, just so future you can see that the buried version wasn't actually a failure. I never believe it until I see it side by side.
"the second thing is always better and I'm always mad about it" is a whole life philosophy and I hate how accurate it is.
And the photo thing. Ugh. You're right and I've been avoiding that too, because the buried version IS a failure in the sense that it's what it is now, and I don't want a record of me chickening out four times. But that's the exact reason to take it. So future me can see it wasn't wasted, it was stacked.
I'm going to do it tomorrow. Photograph the ugly thing, then dig. If it turns into a third thing I'll live with it.
"four layers is not an accident, it's a decision made four times" ok. OK. that one landed somewhere I wasn't guarding.
You're right that I remember a mouth that isn't under there anymore. I keep picturing the version from that night and that's half why I won't touch it, because if I scrape and it's not that, I've lost the thing AND wasted three weeks. Which is stupid, because I lost it the second I put layer two on.
So I scrape. Maybe tonight. I'll let you know what's actually down there and probably hate it for a day and then not.