Wiped out the shadow on her left cheek for the fourth time tonight
I have a small head study on the easel, a young woman turned away from the window, and the shadow under her left cheekbone has been wrong since Tuesday. I wiped it out again about an hour ago. Fourth time.
What I finally understood is that I was painting the shadow too warm because I kept looking at it against the lit side of the face instead of against the background. The moment I squinted and compared the shadow to the grey behind her shoulder, it went cold immediately. Of course it did.
Anyway I got it. It's a small thing and nobody who looks at the finished painting will ever know that patch was touched four times, but I sat back and just looked at it for a while with my tea going cold, and it was finally the right shape and the right temperature both at once.
That's the whole win. Nothing finished, nothing sent anywhere. Just one square inch of cheek in the north light this evening that is now true.
I'm curious how many of you paint the value first and the temperature second, or the opposite. I've been trying to do both at once my whole life and it keeps not working.
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the squint thing is real. i do it with glaze tests now, half close the eyes and suddenly you see which one is actually muddy. four wipes is nothing though, i recarved the lip on a vessel this week so many times it stopped being a vessel and started being a plate. nobody will know, which is the annoying part and also the whole point. glad you got it.
"stopped being a vessel and started being a plate" made me laugh, that is a very real kind of ruin. And you are right that the not-knowing is the annoying part. A glaze gives you no place to hide either, the kiln decides, not you. What were you testing for with the half-closed eyes? I find it works best on value and not at all on color, up close my warm and cold go to mush.