Day four of glazing this painting and now it is done. This picture has taken 9 days of painting so far, and 21 days work in total including preparation. There is more to do yet. The gold area will include gemstones.
I've learned a few things with this one. Some edges look stark and ugly where the paint was painted next to dry areas during underpainting. There aren't many possible solutions; extend the drying time (not ideal, wet paint accretes more dust), calculate daily painting sections carefully (not always possible) or paint by section and not by object (could work, but would require exact and time consuming colour matching from day to day), or re-wet edges when underpainting (not a bad idea but time consuming, and would also require colour matching together with the hope that the newly wet edges don't show up as different). I'll use bits of all of those. Stark edges are my current biggest hurdle in my quest for perfection.
Another lesson was don't sand the panel before priming. It left a dusty surface that was "hairy" and horrid to paint on, that made me care less while painting. In a way, this was unavoidable. I had prepared one panel for an early version of this painting which I aborted. When I prepared this one I messed up, and in my frustration (and lack of wood!) I decided to flip the panel over and use the back, which needed sanding due to blemishes and is why this one isn't a perfect surface. Even now there is a strong visible scar across the top. I knew this fully before I began, and knew that I could have waited and taken more care but I was growing tired of this old idea. Sometimes you have to compromise quality just to get a job out of the way.
Of good lessons, Blockx transparent mars yellow is great earth yellow, and makes nicer greens than any ochre I've used. I also made good first use of bright yellows and greens for the daffodils, which used cadmium lemon, ultramarine and raw umber (to mute the intensity). Those three and white were used for all of the bright yellows and greens which worked very well.
