You Only Paint Twice is a misleading title because I'm thinking more and more that three is the magic number in painting. When I paint something once, straight off there is about a 66% chance I will be very unhappy with it. A second copy will somehow look worse, as if the first version opened a magic door in a vault of a million tiny doors, and painting the second one rarely finds the same door to push wider. But the third one hones in on the mistakes of the other two and finishes it off. Last year I spent far far too long repainting huge paintings when I should have spent one or two days painting studies first. Dali said twice "No Lazy Masterpieces!" and he was quite right. In my case my laziness made me work ten times harder.
Today I've painted a half size colour study for one of my big pictures of 2009 called The Apocalypse of Finance and today's one day has surely saved three weeks work I could have easily wasted. I'll aim to paint all of my paintings at least twice from now on.
