I was painting in the dark today- none of my lights were working for me; not the grow lights, the happy light, ambient, the luminarcs.  Colors were wrong in some, the latter was giving me a headache, and this being an overcast January afternoon in the northern hemisphere the daylight was iffy at best.  I will tell you what- everything changed with the advent of easy, bright, artificial light and while I can appreciate that conceptually, its hard to truly understand what that means to the paint.  One more thing on the subject- I always want to ask people who expound on their "old master" ways of pushing paint if they turn off the lights. Or have gotten rid of their paint tubes. Or tie their own brushes. Or seek out hand-loomed linen, or keep a pot of rabbit skin boiling on the stove.
   On another note- I had to start over on the subject's head this week. (Tedious explanation about what was wrong.) Sandpaper, and a few swipes of big brushes and I rendered it pretty clean, all the while repeating to myself "it's only paint, it's only paint..." She's back now, and we're moving forward again.
The soundtrack(s)- Santana, "Supernatural"; Leonard Cohen, "The Sisters of Mercy"; J.S. Bach, (played by Glenn Gould) the Goldberg Variations- the 1981 recording.  Now, that's an old master played with the lights, and the pedal on...
   
  

  Last wet update on this one- it'll show up as tender paint next.  It's almost there, but the blackbirds still aren't quite what they should be yet, and the sky still needs more work.  Heck, the fields and the trees and the grass all need more work, but that just a matter of endurance now, not about figuring out how to make it so.  In the meantime, out in the garage, some fine red oak is being turned into a stretcher for the Shelby Lynn portrait.  
 

Brought a few paintings out to Suffolk today, then came home and squeezed out a little more paint and a few hours since the day to day was substantially brighter than the day on the canvas.  Yesterday I began reviewing the reference shots for a mostly formal portrait- it'll be up here by this time next week- what a different palette that'll be.