I've been fighting a landscape for three weeks. Barn, treeline behind it, low sky. Every time I got to the shadow side of the barn it turned to gray soup and I kept blaming the paint, bought a new tube of burnt umber like that was going to fix anything.

It was the water. Not the jar, the actual water in my brush. I was rinsing, wiping, rinsing, wiping, and still carrying a wet brush into the dark mix. So I'm basically adding a teaspoon of tap water to every shadow and wondering why it looks chalky.

Tonight I wiped the brush on my jeans (sorry jeans) until it was just damp and the shadow went down like it's supposed to. Three weeks. I sat there feeling like an idiot and also weirdly thrilled.

Anyway if you're a rinser like me, try the jeans thing. My 11 year old told me it's "kind of gross" so I'm passing it along.

Also the sky in this one has been repainted four times and it's still not the sky I see in my head. Some paintings just want to fight.