The Self-Isolation Residency 9th April 2020: Day 11

Just a fairly quick post tonight as I've spent most of today painting again. Above is the beginning of my first oil version of this paining, as I said previously now that I'm working in oils I've moved over to a black ground. That was of course today's first job, sanding and priming my board to black. The problem is I'm not sure if this will work out exactly as I have in  mind. Cadmium yellow is such a transparent pigment that so far the black ground is really dulling the vibrancy of it. I will persevere with it, but I may also start another version tomorrow on a white ground.

Again I think that this is another good example of an artists working practice that many people do not realise, and I know this especially from new students. It's really not uncommon for an artist to create several variations on a piece of work, often working on them simultaneously. If I do start on a version of this painting on a white ground it will be the fourth painting so far, plus various drawings and photographic studies, but I don't envisage it being the last.

It's this body of work in a project that not only builds an artist's portfolio but helps work evolve and grow. I have often had a student say to me 'I want to make a painting'; as the process of this project is already showing, good paintings are seldom made in isolation. We call it an artist's practice, meaning the noun. When an artist makes several paintings as part of a project it is not 'practise'. But it is good 'practice' to know how to work, when to experiment and if necessary even when to 'practise'. As a professional artist it is important to form these kind of working habits as part of your practice, as work evolves within a certain project it stimulates all of an artist's work to evolve within their whole portfolio. When an artist is constantly working one piece links directly to the next and the next and so on. I can honestly say that all the work I have created over the last 25 years or more has been connected to each other, the connections might not be apparent to you, but they are very obvious to me.