I have a half-figure on the easel, a woman turned slightly away, one hand resting on the back of a chair. Almost nothing else decided yet. The hand is the problem.

First pass I painted it thin, straight into the wet ground, no drawing underneath worth keeping. It was loose and a little clumsy and it read. Then I decided to take it seriously. Redrew it properly, measured it against the head, corrected the knuckle, gave it a real structure. Dead. Third time I chased that structure and overworked it worse. Fourth I wiped back to the ground and did it again fast, and it came out almost exactly like the first.

What I keep circling: I know the anatomy, I know why the first one worked (the edge of the forearm got lost in the shadow, so the eye finished the shape), and I still could not paint it that way on purpose. The knowledge gets in front of the seeing.

So the question I have no answer for, and I'd like yours: when you finally see what the good version was, do you paint it again clean, or do you scrape the whole thing and let it happen once?

Also, for the record, I am not wiping the hand a fifth time. That is what I told myself this morning and I have already caught myself looking at the rag.