Life's Little Surprises

There's this absolutely sublime feeling when a piece of work that has been labored on for hours upon hours is done.  Welp, take a picture, move onto the next one.  There's also a limited amount of space in one's studio to hang or nicely/safely store large paintings.  Then, there's the universe who says, well, Steph, you're renting a spot shared by 2 other artists, the building is dirty and unfinished, there's multiple machine shops in the basement, and open windows.  So, something falls, and this happens:

And then you cry.

For comparison, the earlier, finished product:

Smooth perfection, meet gash.  Trying not to loose my mind completely over this 8 inch long massacre, I remembered that I want to become an art conservator.  Isn't this the exact thing these lovely sciencartists fix?  Consulting the amazing team (that I also happen to intern for) at MACC, I looked into this nasty scratch to find out just how bad it was.  The scrape, from an unknown object, must have been sharp, and must have been at an angel-praising angle, because, would you believe it, there isn't even a dent in the canvas where the gash is.  Finding that it was simply a topical wound dried my tears.  After consolidating the flaking layers of oil paint and hard-work, my plan is to simply fill, cover, fill, cover, potentially repaint the face (EHH), cover, fill until the unsightly wound no longer exists.  And thus, my crash course into art conservation.*

And I was so proud of that ear.  

*Note, were this a piece by another artist, the covering and repainting of face aspect would absolutely not be involved.  A matching color impainted in the affected area that would be fully reversible would be the typical course of action.