I wish to record some lessons learned after a month of intensive painting which I used to correct some long-standing problems and to increase my confidence as a painter. Why I did this and what I’ve learned. I’d been unable to move forward with my painting for a long time now and when August (2011) arrived and I realised I’d only painted two or three paintings this year I suddenly thought of the nice spiral bound pad I had in the cupboard and decided to fill it up for once by doing three or four paintings a week during August. The idea wasn’t to produce finished work so much as to tackle some of the problems areas I’ve been struggling with and to burst through the “artist’s block” thing by painting most days. In the course of this I’ve learned some lessons which I’m writing down here so I remember them. 1. There is a balance between sketchiness and precision. Too sketchy doesn’t suit me, neither does too much precision. I like to finish a painting in one session - heck I’m not selling the things and I do this for enjoyment rather than hard labour. 2. While pen outlining works for some people its not for me. I prefer watercolour in the traditional style. 3. I started painting greens with two prepared greens - olive green and sap green. These are great, but later I reverted to using combinations of French Ultramarine, Winsor Green, Raw Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Raw Umber. These work better in my view and when you mix them on your palette you have many variations to play around with. Similarly, French Ultramarine and Light Red produce all the greys you could possibly want and are much livelier than Paynes Grey in my view. 4. Foreground is vital in a landscape - when I choose to paint something without much of a foreground, the painting easily ends up looking childish, like “colouring in”. 5. Its a myth that watercolour can’t be corrected. You can actually change quite a lot with wetting with a brush and blotting out with a tissue. Also, by adding extra layers. 6. Its important to know what colours are transparent and which are opaque. 7. The preliminary drawing is vitally important - and its worth rubbing out anything that’s not quite right - even if that means removing half the drawing and starting again. 8. Tone is one of the most important things to get right. Wrong tones destroy perspective and you need to keep checking that colours you apply aren’t too strong or too weak. 9. Its worth working on 425gsm (200lb) paper. It saves an awful lot of trouble. 10. Time spent waiting for paint to dry is never wasted.