I am continuing to attempt to make progress with the painting of flesh. I think one crucial realisation is my awarness of my lack of knowledge or innate ability with this particular, crucial, facet of my work. Previous thoughts on this subject have also espoused an overall dogmatic and scientific approach to painting flesh. I do feel though, with the help of Andy, that I have made some advancements.

There seem to be particular artists whose handling of flesh interests me, many are obvious. Titian, Velasquez, Rembrandt, Saville and Neo Rauch in particular at the moment.

I have found that I am tending towards a process of laying down the shadows first. Normally a fairly neutral, dark but thin burnt umber/ultramarine mix is laid down. Over this Alizarin crimson, quite potent and like a sticky glaze, is added to the darkest points and then colbalt blue seems to find itself attracted to the exteriors of the shadows and glazed over the whole softly. This leaves the figure with a bruised like quality.

Highlights: The strongest figures seem to have two levels of highlights. The most intense being a thick impast white, laid down in a variety of ways but normally a medium mixed with Titanium. The low lights are simply areas of canvas with hardly any pigment laid on them. I like the contrast in weight this gives.

Next I find that a two stage glazing process harmonises the figure and brings out the fleshy quality. First a Raw Sienna and then a napthol red (applied thinly enough that it reads as pink to the eye. Neither are applied uniformally but with varying intensity determined by the figure itself.

A burnt umber wash or even some over paintings with white (both pointers from Andy) are sometimes added to this.

I realise this is still formulaic. But that realisation has actually only come from articulating the process. By recording these thoughts I can hopefully conscioulsy move beyond this process and develop my flehs painting. I still need to ask myself what kind of flesh I am trying to paint, why and how.

I know I want the paint to feel like flesh, to have the sense that its fatty, sweaty and grabable. This seems to be as much about texture, surface and application as it is to do with colour and tone. This is nothing to do with a search for a photographic likeness to flesh, even if the figure is derived from a photograph. Paint can reach far beyond a photoraph in this respect.