It seems like every painting has an awkward stage. It’s that stage where everything doesn’t look quite right and you don’t know if it’s going to go bad or get better.

I have to attribute this to a lack of focus. Actually, I would say that 85% of the time when a painting or drawing goes bad it is due to me losing focus.

To be more exact I would say that the work that I did this session on the lower back is not looking so good. This area doesn’t have a clear volume plus the brush work is confusing.

If I look at a detail of the painting and remove all color I see that the lower back has some clear transitions in value. But I think some of these transitions are a bit too abrupt.

The more I look a the grayscale of the painting I see that the biggest issue is the middle of the back. There is no clear transition of value here and the rendering is confusing.

Well, now I have a clear direction of what to focus on when I return to this painting Sunday. For now I’m going to do some life drawing from a real model and let this painting sit for a day.