Studio Again

It's Monday, so I was in the studio. What to do? I was tempted to launch straight into an attempt to improve my large oil paintings, but instead, I spent a bit of time thinking what I wanted to progress with over the summer. I concluded that yes, I should make an attempt at improving the oil paintings, and I should also do more monochrome acrylics-with-charcoal-and-ink. I also want to have some time for experiments.
So  first today I started a new monochrome, and here it is.

Image copyright Aileen Grant

This is based on a sketch I did on the beach at Tighnabruaich - it's of the sailing club (the Kyles of Bute Sailing Club?). I added some white conte as well as the other materials. I am quite pleased with it, but will review it over the next few days. It did feel like a bit of a struggle today. I did some oils as well, but forgot to take my camera to the studio, so I'll have to wait now till I'm back in the studio on Friday to review the changes.

I'm also thinking about things for other pictures -for instance, I could consider compositions based on these thumbnails.....

I quite like both of these as compositions - the top one would be a re-working of one I did badly at Leith, doing it in a landscape format instead of square. However, that will be for another day. Back to work tomorrow.