Opening Note

Last week I wrote about an old exercise I keep returning to — ten brush strokes, no more. Once the brush lifts, that stroke is spent. Whatever the hand decides in that moment is the painting. I called it a discipline of restraint, something I practice mostly in private, on studies I don't always keep and rarely show anyone.

This week, without planning it, that same restraint showed up somewhere I didn't expect: in an actual finished piece. Not a study. Something meant to be seen.

From the Studio

A single bird, and a great deal of open water. Most of the paper here is empty, and that's the point — the bird only reads at that scale if nothing else is asking to be looked at. Add weather, add detail, and the space stops being large.

So I left the sky alone. No smoothing. No second pass. No chasing the edges back into place. It dried the way it wanted to.

A Closer Look

I've been sitting with why this one felt different from the studies I don't photograph. The ten-stroke exercise lives in private — I do it to remember what happens when I stop managing every inch of the paper, and most of what comes out of it stays mine. This is the first time I let that same discipline finish something meant to leave the studio.

The hard part wasn't restraint on the page. It was resisting the urge to go back in once the piece was already finished and "help" it — to add a wave, a texture, a reason for all that emptiness. The bird doesn't need a reason. Neither does the water around it.

An Invitation

This is the first Studio Notes issue I'm also posting here, on the blog — and that means, for the first time, there's a place to leave a comment publicly if something here makes you want to respond.

A few of you have told me you wanted somewhere to do that. So here it is: if this brought up a stroke you'd add, one you'd never dare skip, or just a thought about restraint in your own life, I'd love to read it in the comments below.

A short letter like this one goes out from the studio every Saturday morning. Link in the bio, or on the newsletter page, if you'd like it in your inbox too.