Trying a night and day charcoal drawing on gesso. The skeleton arrives, it is too small, it has more to say. I’ll sleep on it and reassess.
A warm oddly coloured diptych arrives. It has something, it is a little tentative, although large.
Dot around several works not settling. I am thinking too hard and not relaxing into it.
There is something in the warm and the cool I want to formulate. It is percolating in sketches and one awful pastel drawing. Awful drawings can sometimes be useful.
The charcoal swallows a huge skeleton, spanning both sides of a diptych. Could be too dark. I’ll live with it for a bit.
Use the cheapest brush in the studio and make a luminous bubbling surface, clean and alive. I make another instantly. The brush makes fascinating globules of paint.
Still tweaking a small diptych of inverted colours, there is something I can’t put my finger on that is holding it back. The large ones are incredibly odd, and might not make it.
Feel a bit lost. Dabble, unenthusiastically.
Push some ultramarine into old failed paintings, make some painting of burning shadow fleet ships. There have been a lot in the news lately, some in my North Sea.
I work away the dark, compressed charcoal from the diptych, it feels better, like it has aged. I’ll add a layer over the top once the fixative is dry.
Pull out a brainwave sister painting I’d turned away. I love it. It reminds me of Lowry’s seascapes, the colour, the mood, the quiet.
The cool and calm or reach into colour? I am torn, the way forward is so unclear.
I screen shot colours from a photographic series, illuminating any reference apart from small passages which interest me. Maybe I ought to try and formulate something from this. Colour is a sticking point at the moment, and the fear is holding me back.