Level 4

I am white-knuckling my way through Level 4 of the good lessons with Jenny. She still gives you plenty of guidance but there's no warm up exercises or taking it slow - every lesson is a painting that you have to plan and then paint your way through, somehow. The first one was flowers on a soft background - there are a couple of dodgy bits that I'm not happy with but generally it turned out OK. I painted this twice but prefer the first one for all its flaws.

The second one was 'old boots' which I struggled with from beginning to end - drawing, getting the colour right, getting the 'crumpled' look ... it looked like an absolute pile of crap until the very end and I nearly threw it away and started again about five times. But you have to paint through the well-known 'ugly stage', and so I did, and I really like the result. Still some issues but it actually looks like boots. Most surprising.