Never say "Never!"

Time marches on, and what seemed like a bad idea some months or years ago now seems worth another try.

Almost two years ago, before beginning a painting of a beautiful Chinese stole, I decided to follow some advice I'd been given to "do a number of studies first, trying out different colour schemes". The result was "A Gift from Candice":--

But by the time I'd settled on the final colours, I was almost heartily sick of the whole thing and vowed never to work this way again.

Some months later came another lesson with a "Never!" outcome, with the laborious preparations for "A Question of Scale":--

It took me soooo long to prepare a layout scaled to the actual objects in this still life, that I had to rally my forces to get on with the painting itself.

But here it is, springtime 2015, and with pencil and ruler in hand, I'm preparing another scaled layout:

What's more, I'm doing a more detailed colour study than usual:

And I've done not one, but two, small studies of parts of the painting-to-be:-- a hand holding a piece of paper:--

...and for better or worse, a head study:

Is it looking promising.....or scary? Time will tell. WATCH THIS SPOT.