If I have occasionally made the odd criticism of Terry Harrison and his numerous brushes and tricks, I take them all back. After today, anyone who succeeds in painting a watercolour of any kind or size has my unwavering admiration. I started a watercolour yesterday - stretched the paper, for once (not especially successfully) and things started going wrong from the very second wash on the sky. Sometimes, they just do. A watercolour can work in a beautiful series of apparently planned moves and stages and reach its majestic conclusion, and one takes credit. It's the ones that just don't behave at all from the outset that make you realize how much luck you enjoyed with the ones that did. Paint wouldn't flow; I dropped a loaded hake onto the paper - not a happy accident, a distinctly unhappy one; the surface of the paper began to lift as I mopped up the mess, and just to help things on nicely, I forgot to turn the tissue over that I was using to blot, and so got flecks of blue paint where I didn't want it. In the end - end? what am I saying? I'm nowhere near the end - I sprinkled sea salt over the wet paint and left it over night. Couldn't really get any worse, I thought. Now, sprinkling salt sometimes works for me and sometimes doesn't - I didn't have any high hopes of it. But this morning, when I steeled myself to look, it had created some interesting effects - sufficient to prevent me ripping the thing from its board and tearing it into confetti. So, should I post a watercolour in the next few days, you may not like it; I may not like it; but be kind to it - it has taken the sweating of blood, language - oh, terrible language! - hot and cold flushes; the dawning conviction that I shall never be a watercolourist; and yet - I've rather enjoyed it. Why? The thing has driven me up the wall, it has been anything but fast and loose - a technique for which I simply don't seem to have the aptitude - indeed, I wondered at one point if I'd forgotten every single damn' thing I've ever learned about watercolour. But - it's been interesting. I don't know that there's any moral to this, other than that even a major confrontation with paint and paper can absorb one's attention and give pleasure - I suppose the thing is not to get too upset about it when things don't work out, but just keep on until you've got something (or other!) that looks as though it might work. Actually, maybe there is a moral ... years ago, or even months ago, if I'd got into this sort of pickle with a watercolour I would have done a Rupert Cordeux, and put a pickaxe through it (or near equivalent). I'm much less inclined to do that now; and perhaps it'll be of some help to others who are seeming to get nowhere with their painting and ripping 'em to bits - don't give up too soon. Others might well disagree entirely - I remember someone telling me long ago that some paintings just weren't meant to be, and won't happen; and I think that was probably true, just that this one wasn't (I hope) necessarily one of them. We'll see.......