Greetings!
If you need a refresher, in the previous installment of this newsletter I declared my love for the color brown. I have now put some archives up on my website too, so you can read that again, should you desire. Thank you to all my nerd and art friends who responded. I am tickled it hit with so many people. And yes, I admit: there is no brown light. But I do need you nerds to get onboard with the importance of acknowledging these hues with a formal name in subtractive land 😛
Subtractive
I promised you a part 2 of the story, and the reason it took me so long is a little embarrassing: I have been struggling with a color match for about 9 months now. It is brown. And I wanted it to be perfect.
It began with a desk. An old friend handed me down a wonderful spinet desk, first used by their grandmother and signed on the bottom of the drawer in 1932. It also has their mother’s signature from 1979, and their own from 2004. It is one of those pieces that is just a cacophony of woodgrain running in different directions, all slotted together perfectly. I think there is something about all those little variations on one color that just scratches my brain in a deeply satisfying way.
It was a nice simple project at first. I sanded the finish down to repair the water stains, resealed the wood, polished the brass pieces, and finally fixed the droop in the drawer by removing the worn desk rail and replacing it with a new piece. I left a couple unevenly worn spots that spoke to me for one reason or another.
The only problem was the old broken rail had worn down the drawer to match, and it did not have enough edge left to sit on its new rail. I made a little splint for the drawer, and filled the uneven drawer side with wood filler, sanding it down to a smooth finish so it would fit on its new rail and glide smoothly. There was just a little bit of white on the side of the drawer at that point where I patched it. “No big deal,” said I. “I’ll just color match,” said I, arrogantly strapping on my wax wings and sailing for the sun.
I’ve mixed so many browns similar to this tone. My bet? An even split cadmium orange and dioxazine purple. My favorite blend for a very saturated brown. It was a little too dark. I cut it with titanium white. Too cool. I added cadmium yellow. Too garish. That little patch just stared at me, taunting. It got a little less little, too.
“I’ll come back to it,” I promised myself. I did the next day. The next pass was closer. And the patch was a little bigger. But I got impatient and sealed it before the paint was dry, and though the color was overall the same, my finish changed the pattern just enough. I knew it wasn’t right.
The drawer sat in my office for a couple weeks before I put it back in the desk. And just in case this isn’t clear, the color match I am obsessed with is on the side of a drawer that is quite literally unexposed to view for 99% of the time. But I am not 99% of people.
A couple months later, I pulled it out again. “Let me just pull out my spectrometer and see how close I am.” I metered the wood. I metered the patch. I was getting readings of delta E 2000 around 5-6.5, which in technical terms is way super very obviously different. Ouch, said my ego.
“Well, there’s a lot of variation in wood. How close is the wood on the other side of the drawer from the darkest part to the lightest part? I checked the variation there. More like 3-4.5. I put the drawer back again and closed it.
Several months pass. I am living my life in the Blessed Year of 2025, with its news cycles the way that they are and world events the way that they are and entertainment industry shenanigans the way that they are but something else is eating at me.
That fucking desk drawer just isn’t right.
I pull it out again. “What do I like about the real wood here?” I ask myself. What I like is how uneven it is. I like that just by looking at the worn pattern I can hear the creak of my friend opening the drawer too. I like the swirls of grain that indicate how long the tree that made the desk grew in the ground. I like that it’s warmer in places, and cooler in others, but clearly all of the color starts near the same target. I like that the veneer of time is just a part of it now. It’s not the color; it’s the story told by the texture, and the pattern.
I take a deep breath and though I can hear every woodworker I know yelling at me, I know what I need to do: I need to paint over that whole piece of wood above the desk rail.
Look, I’m not a carpenter and I’m not a woodworker either: I’m just a weirdo that likes sanding and refinishing. But even I know you’re supposed to let the quality of the wood shine! Don’t ruin antiques because you added paint to them!
However, if the story in the pattern is what’s special about that wood finish, and I’m not a tree being worn down over 90 years, I need a greater area so that I’m not trying to blend in to something from which I’ll just always be fundamentally different.
I go back to my standby mix. Cadmium orange and dioxazine purple, in titanium white. I layer it on. I do a wash of cadmium yellow, on top this time, and uneven. I add a different brown, cadmium red and chromium oxide green for a different layer of undertones. I build it up dry brushing in places, and going quickly with water added for smooth blending in others. Painting fast like this reminds me of sculpting. I let this one panel be what it is: my interpretation. Not wood grain anymore.
This match still isn’t perfect, but it’s finally truer. My trompe l’oeil, a bit of art sneaking into a desk drawer that 99% of people aren’t going to see, embracing the fact that this one little piece is 100% my point of view.
Additive
Literally everything I’m working on is a big ol’ NDA, so you’ll just have to trust me that it’s going to be great. Eventually, you may see it. Or you might not, if you don’t open the drawers. But if it isn’t obvious… being the woman behind the drawer is kind of my jam.
Happy fall. I celebrated my birthday yesterday by finally drawing this tepid saga to a close and boy do I feel satisfied. I hope you also find a tiny battle to win, and maybe even a big one.
Rory
