When I moved in I was so pleased with the light. Big window, north facing, nothing direct, the kind of light you can set your palette against. Three years later I finally say it: it is too even. Nothing tells me anything. Every edge I paint there goes soft and agreeable and I bring the canvas downstairs to the kitchen and it looks like it was painted by someone being polite.

So now I paint at night, one lamp, 2700K, and I check the day's work in the morning in bad light by the door before I let myself touch it again. Yesterday I wiped two hours off a forearm because of that. Two hours and a quarter tube of lead white, gone, and honestly it was a good two hours because I learned the arm was wrong.

The north light is still the best wall in the flat for drying. I am not ungrateful. I am just not going to be lied to by a window anymore.