When the glue dries I will mute and darken the background and map in the rest of my body and hair.

Making progress

This is going well. I switched to cool colours, a grey-lilac, a lemon yellow and an ice blue, and stopped trying to paint my nose, looking instead at shapes of colour and tone. As always, that method worked better than trying to paint my nose. I'm not worried about my left cheek at the moment as I think I want to work on the background next, and my neck and shoulders, before I faff on correcting jawlines etc. Maybe collage for the background? I may make a collage on a separate sheet then cut out my 'bust' and lay it over. That would stop the background laying heavy over the head. Suggestions please anyone?

Previous stages

I have found my earlier posts - looks like I started this in July 2008. I think I used a soft water-soluble pencil to start with. I got into a rut with it, so I scribbled over the part I didn't like. Then I started again in the corner with acrylics, thinking it would make an interesting mixed-media project. But, again, I ran out of steam. So I covered the bottom left corner with a scrap of brown paper (not shown) and left it for a while. That's where I picked it up yesterday, working in soft pastels. I'm off to do a bit more work on the pastel work now, and I'll let you know how I get on.

Rip it up and start again

Well, that was the idea I got from reading An Artist's Journal yesterday, and the next step will be something to do with scruffy train stations, hence the blue and orange I used which reminds me of the Merseyrail Waterloo platform. That was a place in which I spent many hours whilst I lived in Liverpool. I feel I must add that I was there waiting for trains to various destinations.

So, I covered a canvas with burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and a reddish orange, and worked it in with a 50/50 mix of water and PVA glue. When I was happy with this (happy being a moveable feast, you understand) I ripped up the pastel and ink drawing of the yellow clock and glued it on. I was surprised about how strongly I felt when I was arranging the pieces. However, there's a piece on the left which curls and leads the eye out of the left of the canvas, so I'm going to need to bring the eye back on, or create an barrier on the left. I may in fact turn it round 90 degrees clockwise, putting the clock at the top instead of on the left and see how that works.

I'm interested to see how the glue dries with the acrylics. I've never mixed these before, but it felt like the right thing to do at the time. You'll notice I'm still avoiding working on, or even talking about the big self portrait I started.