I spent the whole morning scraping back a glaze I was proud of last week. It was doing everything right - the light sat in it exactly the way I wanted, the undertone was singing. But it was too pretty. That's the thing nobody tells you about painting. Pretty is a trap. It stops you from going further because you're afraid to wreck it.

So I wrecked it. Scraped it back to the dry underlayer with a palette knife and now the whole panel is this raw, honest state I have to rebuild from. And I'm not sorry. The first version would have been a nice painting. This one might be a real one.

The panel is propped on the easel in this ugly in-between state right now and I keep glancing at it like it's a dare. It is, I suppose.

Anyone else ever deliberately kill a passage that was working? Or am I the only one who does this to themselves.