One thing about blogging the progress of a painting is it will serve me in the future as an aide memoire to the difficulties that I make for myself! I had forgotten just how difficult it is painting on the rough surface I have made by criss-crossing strings of paint over the canvas. I’m using a small round brush and trying to paint a mesh of short lines but initially all I can manage is blotches. Hopefully as I go on it will look less like a picture of someone with a very nasty rash!

But I’ve now got an aesthetic decision to make. My original idea was to use metallic gold paint for the foreground figure. I’m not sure how to integrate this with my technique or how metallic paint will actually look on the rough service. But above all I’m worried that the effect will be cheap and kitsch.

There’s only one solution… make a smaller study and try out what the gold paint will look like on that. Watch this space!