Three weddings in one lawn, and I am the only one who brought my own squirrel-hair brush
I am just back from four days at a wedding function in Darbhanga where they had hired me for the kohbar painting on the wall of the bridal room. Twelve feet by eight. The family wanted it done in three days so the photographer could shoot it before the guests came.
I told them what I always tell: the fine line cannot be hurried. My mother's brush, squirrel hair, I have kept it since she gave it at my marriage. So I started at five in the morning and worked till eleven at night under one yellow bulb somebody had fixed for me, and the masons were still plastering the outer wall so dust was settling on the wet lines as I drew.
Finished it. The bamboo grove, the fish pair, Kamdev and Rati, all of it. Then the photographer came and put a ring light on it and told his assistant to "enhance the colours later." He said the wall was looking slightly dull.
Dull. It is ochre from the stone I grind myself and black from soot of the lamp. It will not look like a screen, ji. It is not supposed to.
They paid me on time, I will say that much, which is more than the last three functions. But I came home and sat with my box of brushes and could not open it for the whole evening. My wife asked if I was unwell. I said no.
What I am thinking is that we paint for the wall, not for the phone. But the wall is only being seen through the phone now. Somewhere in between, the line gets lost.
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the dust while you're laying fine line is its own special kind of hell. i work in charcoal and i've had a whole morning's shading ruined by somebody sweeping two rooms over, so twelve feet by eight under one yellow bulb with masons outside is not a job, that's a siege.
but the thing that got me is the brush. your mother's, kept since your marriage, and they want the fine line hurried. the brush alone should have told them what kind of work they were buying. people hire the hand and then act surprised when the hand has a pace.
three days for that size is a lie they told themselves, and you paid for it at five in the morning. hope the photographer at least got the wall and not just the guests standing in front of it.
the brush thing is the part that got me too. everyone wants the hand, nobody wants the pace the hand comes with. and a squirrel hair brush from your mother kept since your marriage, they looked at that and saw a brush, not a receipt for thirty years of somebody's eye. i paint acrylic so i can lay flat color over a mistake and pretend it never happened, but i've watched the fine line people work and there's no undo on that. one hurried wobble and the wall remembers forever.
"A receipt for thirty years of somebody's eye" - ji, that line I will keep. You have understood the thing exactly. And you are right, one wobble and the wall remembers forever, there is no laying flat colour over it later, the line is either true or it is a lie and everybody in that family will look at it for the next fifty years.
Acrylic is honest work also, no disrespect. But yes, the fine line people you watched, they were not being slow for slowness sake. The hand has to be quiet before the brush can be quiet. 🙏
Charcoal ji, so you know the dust trouble exactly. Sweeping two rooms over and a whole morning gone, yes. And the worst is nobody believes you when you say it, they think you are making excuse for slow work.
About the brush, you have said it better than I could. My mother's brush is not a tool only, it is her hand continuing. When I hold it I am not free to hurry it, that is not in my hand. People are buying the hand, as you say, and then they are surprised the hand has its own pace. What to do.
The kohbar I finished, by grace. But three days for that size, I told them from the first day itself it is not possible, and still they said do the needful. So we do the needful and spoil our own eyes doing it.