The ear was for a portrait of my neighbour, an older woman with a red scarf, and the light off it was doing something I could not get right. Scraped it twice. Third pass held. I put it up because I liked it, not as a lesson or a "process" thing.

Forty likes. Which is about what I get for a finished head, so I am not complaining. But the comments were all from other painters. The people who buy my work said nothing. Then a woman I have never met in Toulouse messaged asking if she could buy the ear. Just the ear. She wanted it as a small piece, cropped.

I said yes and I am still not sure how I feel about it. It arrived in her flat last week and she sent a photo with her coffee cup next to it and I thought, fine, that is the painting doing its work. But it also makes me wonder if the full head is the wrong container for what I actually paint. If I have been making the frame too big for the light.

Meanwhile the commissions that pay for the studio get one line of text and a request for a discount. I am not going to pretend I have solved this. Some weeks it is just the ear and the coffee cup and no clarity.