What do you do when something you work on defeats you? Occasionally, if I’m having a clear up, I’ll throw odd scraps with scribbles on them in the bin but mostly they go into an overflowing box. This second attempt at the spring onions turned out worse than the colour trial I think. I took a lot more time with the drawing and painting. I composed the colours carefully and worked on it over four days, a total of maybe 10 hours. Perhaps the picture is too small for such an amount of work. I was trying to be precise using sable brushes and thinned paint but the result looks like an overworked sketch. I’ve put them side by side on the wall and will look at them for a few days, trying to resolve what I might have done differently. I’ve done with them for now but they can still teach me something. I can already see that I was trying too hard to paint a picture instead of just painting. I haven’t done with that little glass jug yet though. It has some great little surprises hiding in there, the slightest turn of the head and it shows you something new. I’ve called these 11 and 12 by the way because that’s what they are. This process is not about turning out 100 masterworks but about the journey.

Onions # 11 and 12, Spring Onions and Glass Jug, Oil on paper, 200 x 170 mm