Used up my last stick of charcoal on a hand I'm going to paint over anyway
I'm down to a nub of the soft vine charcoal I actually like, the chunky kind, and I've been rationing it like it's the last of something. Rationing it by drawing smaller. Which is stupid, because small is the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do.
So tonight I said screw it, used the whole thing on a hand at the bottom of the canvas. Just a hand, knuckles and a wrist, half an hour of smudging with my thumb until it stopped looking like a hand and started looking like a thing that was reaching for something. It's the best thing on the canvas and it's going to get buried under the oil layer in about four days. I know that. I don't care.
Anyway I ordered a box of the same size from the art store and paid almost as much for shipping as the charcoal. Please tell me someone else does this, hoards the one material they love and then works smaller and worse because of it
4
6commentsSaveFollow threadShare
the rationing-by-drawing-smaller thing is so real and so dumb, i do the same with the good paint, saving it for a canvas that never comes. also the buried hand is kind of the whole point though? the best marks are always the ones nobody's supposed to see, you paint looser when you know it's going under. keep the nub, when it's gone you'll finally buy the big box and stop rationing like a coward lol
The cadmium orange for two years is the part that got me. I have a Kolinsky brush I've used maybe four times because I'm scared of ruining it, and meanwhile my regular brush looks like a hedgehog.
Half-agree on the buried hand being the point though. Yes you loosen up when it's going under, but then the looseness is stuck in a layer nobody sees. What if you painted the rest of the canvas like it was going to be buried too? That's the harder trick and I've never managed it for a whole piece.
the hedgehog brush got me, mine's got a bald patch in the middle from me scrubbing at it like it owes me money. and the kolinsky sitting in its wrapper is its own kind of rationing, same disease.
but you're right and it's annoying how right you are. i loosen up because i know it dies. so the looseness is a lie i tell myself. painting the whole thing like it's going under means giving up the safety net and i have never done it for a whole piece either. half a piece maybe and then i tighten up at the top where i think people will look.
what if you just don't bury it. leave the hand raw and paint the rest around it. the contrast would either be incredible or a total mess and honestly i kind of want to find out
"stop rationing like a coward" ok that landed like a slap and I needed it lol. the good paint on a canvas that never comes!! I have a tube of cadmium orange I've been saving for two years. TWO YEARS. what am I even waiting for, permission?
you're right about the buried marks though. I paint like nobody's watching down there because nobody IS watching. maybe I should just... paint the whole thing like it's going under. terrifying thought honestly.