I think it's going really well today. I loosened up and reintroduced the "mark" into the surface of the face. I also stopped worrying about the background (and the composition). Who cares?..

Earlier today I walked to the library and checked out their only book on painter Lucian Freud where I read a good quote. "If I'm putting someone in a picture, I like to feel that they've fallen asleep there or they've elbowed their way in. That way, they are there not to make the picture easy on the eye or more pleasant, but they are occupying the space of the picture and I am recording them.' Composition, in other words, is never more important to a painting than the subject. 'In my case the sort of odd ease and calm of a composed picture could take some of the life out of it...One of the things in Stanley Spencer I'm so conscious of is his composition'('Shall we put this there?')...I felt that the way I put things looked awkward, in the way that life looks awkward."