Surfaces! Surfaces!

Like a good old fashioned painter I usually stretch and prepare the canvases myself. Maybe I am getting lazy or just old, but this time I treated myself to some already prepared ones. I kidded myself that because they were so tiny (yes, my work is getting smaller, like me) they would be difficult and fiddly to prepare, Luckily I had bought one extra canvas to experiment on as disaster struck when I came to stain it with dark brown paint. It was such a horrible greasy, shiny surface that I couldn't acheive a dark colour at all. So I will have to sandpaper each one of the six canvases and then paint on a gesso ground. My aim is to have the first layer of the painting done by the time I open Ted Coney's Family Portraits on 17th April. Have you booked yet?