No Picture.

I've spent the day working on, what should have been the final colour layer of, a small landscape painting that I started early last year. I'm not happy with it, so am going to bin it and use the stretcher for something else.

More rubbing down, more primer. It's on ongoing thing, through the days; sand it all off, apply another layer of primer, let it dry... sand it all off, apply another layer of primer, let it dry....

First layer done.

About 5 hours so far today.

10-11 hours work since the last picture.

A broken day. Slow going.

First colour layer on the sky of the new one.

Second colour layer on the sky.

Painted another colour glaze onto the sky of the large magnolia today. There's too much glare from the light to get a decent picture, so I'll post a detail shot and upload an image of the whole thing tomorrow.

I've spent what little time I could find over the weekend, putting a pencil drawing down for a new painting. This one's 80 cm x 80 cm. It's not one of the stretchers I was making last week; it'll be quite a while before they're ready.

Priming the raw linen. The first coat is an acrylic gesso primer, diluted one part gesso to five parts water, to seal the fabric. On top of that I'll apply anywhere between ten and fifteen coats of primer, sanding the surface down between each one, until the weave of the fabric is obliterated and a smooth, panel finish is achieved.

Stretching linen.

Finally finished the second layer of underpainting.

Going to call it a night; done about 15 hours today.

Only worked a couple of hours yesterday, and today was pretty short too; about 12 hours progress since my last post.

More work along the bottom edge.

There's just the swathe around the bottom right to underpaint now.

Finished the second layer of underpainting around the top left.

Making stretchers...

...

I did the blooms that are set back, to the right of this image, over the weekend. Today I've been working down from the top left corner. I'll probably do another couple of hours tonight.

The whole image so far.

A bit more work.

More work around right hand side.

... and the right hand side.

Back on the big one today. More work around the bottom left hand corner.