Phase: 2

Date: September 1, 2007

Description:
At this point in time, the painting has proceeded at a much more leisurely pace. I’d decided to do the fence post next. Normally I work left-to-right, because going in the other direction means that my hand will rest on, and potentially damage, previously painted areas (I do most but not all of my painting and drawing right-handed). However, in this case, I knew that once the horse was done I would want to be near finished, and that might lead to the fence post not getting the attention to detail that it required. I can anticipate the stages of a painting when I will become impatient to be done – which could lead to a rushed job and a result I’m not happy with – and I knew that the effort of completing the horse would be that stage. Thus, I put off work on the horse until the fence post was completed. This was done wet-on-wet initially, and then built up with wet-on-dry layers.

Oddly, whoever had last painted the white fence had overlooked painting the bit to the right side of the fence post. I’d considered making it white also, but decided to leave it the way it was in the photo – partly in shadow, and weatherbeaten.