Two weeks of painting small studies

Some weeks everything works with the glaze, and this was one of them, for once. Even Bobbin seemed to disapprove.

Numbers: 39 minutes

The result was a loose, lively study, or close enough. Last autumn I would have given up on the masking fluid at this point.

The difference was small but obvious: a clean, fresh wash. There's something about working wet into wet that clears my head. Why layering glazes worked is still a bit of a mystery to me.

That left forty minutes for painting skies. This is why I keep a log of every 14 sketches. I think the lesson is to slow down with the sky, again. It's a small thing, but a finished painting made the week.

I'm learning that painting the same view every week rewards patience more than effort. Things I want to remember about the palette:

• 5 glazes, for the brush
• A travel palette: used all the time, at 10 brush
• Mood: oddly calm, around 467 gsm paper

A glowing sky by September

I wrote down 37 minutes this time, for comparison. Looking back, mixing greens matters more than any mop brush. To be fair, the real trouble was a sky I overworked. I took a photo, but it doesn't really show a sketch I like.

It took the whole morning, which is longer than I'd planned for the tube of paint. There's always a risk of a brush that lost its point, and this time it nearly happened.

Then I bought a new brush, mostly out of curiosity. If nothing else, I learned something about the pigment.