Townscapes at the moment .... It seems to take quite a lot of work to end up with something that seems a bit 'slap-dash'...

I've spent the past thirty-five years putting up scaffolding and I recall Tony, one of the developers we worked for, looking at one of his houses on which we were working (a house going for about 4 mill.) and saying that this was the part of the job that he liked best, meaning, as the scaffolding came down and the building began to emerge. It all then started to take shape.

Painting's a bit similar. The beginning can be rough abstract shapes followed by struggling to get some sort of composition and tonal values worked out. The painting only seems to emerge a bit (hopefully), and get more interesting in the final stages.... at least for me ..