The weather's finally clearing up a little. At the same time yesterday, I started sketching out a vague picture before I knew where it was going to go. One element led to the other, and before I knew it, all the pieces were in place. It took a few seconds after finishing it to realize the picture that had gotten out, and it was like getting hit by a truck. This is going to be one of those pieces that screams to be done, because (I feel at this stage anyway) it's like a compelling call coming from outside me. I hope to do it justice.

So, today, I looked in my various stores of paper, to find something big enough, and smooth (but not too smooth) and thick enough to take all the detail and torture I wanted to put on it. I still haven't found it and I probably don't have it unless I want to settle or go to the art supply store again, but going through the closet was a heartening experience.

The Negotiation is the largest watercolor painting I've ever done. It was done on very rough paper, the largest I can buy, and some of the details in the painting suffer for it, because they're affected by the paper texture. ("Damnit, Janet, why tell us this? It's so bOOOring...") But removing the painting from the closet, the first thing that floored myself was the glowing quality and the smoothness of the overall colors that I managed to get. The actual painting has this first "WOW" factor that maybe disappears a bit when you step up close to see the details, but its detail level is still comparable to an oil painting. I don't know how I can get through in text or online images that this thing has to be seen in real life. I actually think I haven't done anything else like it since January 2002, and I don't know why I stopped. Maybe I just forgot.

In my search for paper and the search for some old paintings to see the results I'd get from different types, I also looked through my stash of really old work (around 1995-1997) and had a good 10 minutes of laughing. There was also more recent pictures that weren't half-bad but would need quite some work to get them to my current standards. I guess this is how you recognise progress.

BTW, Jason, I also found a couple of very old Sandman-insired pictures. You may get a kick out of those!