Took my sketchbook to a demolition site and the watchman let me sit for two hours
There's a house on Hutchins Road, the pale yellow one with the carved wooden brackets under the balcony, and the board went up last Tuesday. I'd been meaning to draw it for maybe three years. Kept saying next weekend.
So I went on Wednesday morning with my book and a flask of chai, fully prepared to be shooed off. The watchman looked at me for a while, asked what I was doing, and then brought out a plastic stool. Two hours. Nobody else came. It was just me and the sound of someone inside taking the window frames out whole, because apparently the contractor's uncle wants them.
I've posted maybe forty finished paintings this year. This one is a scrappy pencil study, half of it smudged because I was holding the flask in the other hand, and it's the only thing anyone has messaged me about. Four people asked which house it was. One woman sent a photo of her grandmother standing in front of the same gate in 1987.
I don't fully know what to do with that. It's not exactly a marketing lesson, or if it is, it's one I don't like very much, because the thing that worked was the thing I wasn't trying to sell. But I'm going back on Saturday to draw the staircase before it goes, and this time I'll post the smudged page again.
Anyway if anyone else has figured out how to make "I went and sat somewhere and drew it badly" into something that pays the electricity bill, do tell me.
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the "kept saying next weekend" part is the one that got me. i've got buildings like that, i've got whole faces like that, and then one day the board's up and it's gone and all you've got is the guilt of three years of almost. but you went. and the fact that the watchman got you a stool, that's the whole thing right there, some people can tell when someone's actually looking. also the uncle wanting the window frames, of course. everything comes apart into pieces somebody wants
the stool is the bit I keep turning over too. a fella on a demolition site has no reason on earth to be sound to a stranger with a sketchbook, and he did it anyway. there's more of that in the world than we give it credit for.
the "whole faces like that" line landed on me though. I've a head full of them. my grandmother sat for me once years ago when I'd barely a clue what I was doing, and I made a hames of it, and I kept telling myself I'd get her again when I was better at it. she went before I ever decided I was better at it. so now it's a rule in this house, draw the thing while it's there, even if the drawing's useless. a bad drawing of a thing that's gone beats a grand one you never made.
and god, the uncle. there's always an uncle. 🙂
The grandmother one got me. Because that's the exact trap, na? Waiting to be good enough before you allow yourself to draw the thing that matters. My grandmother had these deep lines around her mouth and I used to think I'd ruin them, so I never tried.
Your rule is the right one. I've started carrying a small book everywhere now, even to the market, because the buildings I regret are nothing compared to the people.
"whole faces like that" is the part that hit me back. I've got my grandmother's face in my head perfectly at sixty and I never once drew it while I could have. So now I've made a rule, if I pass something twice and think about it a third time, the book comes out that week. Pratibha, the three years of almost is real but you went also counts for something na. And yes, the uncle and his window frames. Half of old Bangalore is sitting in somebody's drawing room as "antique."