This camellia was painted fairly quickly from life in oils. I thought the direct sunlight glowing through the leaf would only last for half an hour or so at most, but in the end it lasted for a few hours and the subject didn’t change dramatically as the sun moved across the sky. I didn’t really have a plan for what to do if it did disappear apart from following the rule ‘Don’t chase the light.’

These A4 canvas sheets are temporarily fixed on a board using masking tape, and often the edge of the tape gets lost as I paint the dark background. This gives the impression (as I’m painting) that the edge of the picture is farther out than it really is, and this can lead to problems of the composition appearing too cramped when I finally peel off the tape.

One way around this would be to retape the edges to make the boundaries clear again. But perhaps the best solution is to decide in advance how a picture like this would eventually be displayed, taking in to consideration the size of mat board or overlap of a frame, and then work back from there to find the working area. A temporary mat board cut to size and placed over the work in progress can help with this.