I have been working on a single hellebore for eleven days, a green-flowered orientalis, and I have just lifted the third glaze off it because the leaves had gone opaque and dead in the shadows.

The fault is mine and it is elementary. I built the first two washes on dry paper, which is correct, but I got impatient with the third and laid it over a wash that was still faintly damp at the base of the leaf. The pigment has flocculated. It looks like dust sitting on the surface rather than light passing through the leaf, and no amount of lifting will bring back the transparency underneath.

What interests me is that I knew better. I have taught this exact point to students, with a hairdryer on the table, and I still did it at half past four in the afternoon because I wanted to be finished.

So, a practical question for the room. When you lose a passage this way, do you lift and rebuild from white, accepting the loss of the underpainting, or do you work with the chalkiness and try to darken around it? I have gone for the lift, and I am not yet sure it was the right call.