I laid on a coat of Ultramarine blue over the brown surface of the number five piece, and used some zinc white mixed with a little payne’s grey to make a semi-transparent blue-grey to glaze over the number two. I pulled the glaze using a clean rag so it has a translucent  patchiness over the white under painting. Newspaper can be good for this too, but it’s quite extreme, leaving saturated and completely removed areas against each other. Using a rag laid flat on the wet canvas then lifted off carefully can remove too much, and require repetition to get it right, but it’s great when it works out properly.
I love to break up the paint surface with a rag, it adds a randomness to the texture that works very effectively when defined later.
The next Neolithic painting (I’m calling it “Storm” for now because the small figure in the background with arms akimbo is brewing a storm) is on the easel staring at me and picking a fight. This is the third time I’ve started painting a falling figure and painted it out. The first one was pretty good too. The model for it was the actor David White, who was a very nice fellow.Â
