I've been faffing about with a 100cm square canvas in between working on various smaller pieces. This large one was supposed to be a companion piece to the'Above the Hood' painting that was finished during the early summer. The idea was that it should follow using summer colours. Because I spent so much time fiddling with it and also making excuses to myself for not finishing it, summer passed, autumn arrived and left and we are now into winter. Despite having taken a lot of photos as we went through the seasons which I thought would keep the colours fresh for me, I have now admitted defeat, as the painting was looking progressively unbalanced. Was it summer, autumn or a hitherto unknown season haha. So the whitewash  is now complete, I'm in the middle of adding the gold collage elements and am happy that I've changed direction. This will be the largest of the Gold Blend series, so it'll be interesting to see if it will work this large.

Just started on some of the darker strokes and some of the charcoal, I'm already feeling good about the change of direction, the strokes are going on fast and decisively, they seem to be almost painting themselves, happy me