Softened Alison

Oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches (51 x 41 cm)

Painters say you shouldn't work on a figure painting when the model is not in front of you, say when he or she is on a break, but I did work on this painting for a while alone in my studio. The piece was looking pretty good at one point during the posing session, but then I lost my way and by the end of the session it looked pretty awful: "like a skeleton," as my wife, Sally, put it.

Extremely irritated by this course of events I tackled the painting in the studio and whipped it back into shape, although a certain stiffness in the figure is probably due to my breaking the rule about refraining from painting when the model is absent. But I'm feeling better now!