Dogs coming back to their ...... yes, well, we'll leave that metaphor!

They say - and I've probably said - once you've finished a painting, particularly an oil, leave it; move on, don't seek to improve or "fiddle with" it. I looked at a painting from last year of Tennyson's Monument, on the downs on the Isle of Wight.  One of my favourite places in the world, or that bit of the world I'm familiar with.  Looked at it, thought it dull, uninspired, tight, boring - I'd worried about getting the obelisk right, to the exclusion of all else: as if it mattered one little bit whether it was accurate or not. In short, I have worked on it again, and like it rather better.  I may post it in a day or two.  It gives me the opportunity to address a myth - painting over an old painting is always "wrong".  Well - if by that we mean painting a whole new picture over an old one, obscuring it with added paint layers, yes - you run the risk of poor adhesion, cracking, and if the old picture was varnished, disaster could await if it ever needs to be cleaned: removing the top layer of varnish is likely to cause the paint beneath to disappear to the level of the old varnish. But: many painters have re-visited their pictures and had a go at making them more interesting (and if you were dissatisfied with your first effort, you won't really lose anything by "editing" it: if it fails it fails, but then - it had failed anyway).  The painter Edwin Austin Abbey, RA, (1852 - 1911) was a collector of sumptuous costumes, in which he liked to dress the subjects of his paintings - he painted one of his subjects in luxurious garments, had the picture hung in the Royal Academy, decided he didn't really care for the sleeve linings, and took it down and re-painted them (Oh Mistress Mine, should you be interested in searching it out).  I don't know if the re-paint cracked, but my laboriously-made point is that there was no particular reason why it should have, merely because it was touched up.   Taking an old canvas, especially someone else's, and starting a completely new painting on it is not a good idea - especially if, as some have, you just sand it down and then apply a coat of acrylic "gesso": it'll fail at some point; probably rather quickly.  Giving your own work a bit of a re-spray job, on the other hand, can work well.  Should you?  Or would it be better to learn from the failure of the first one to paint another - "fail better", as the revered Mr Beckett once put it?  Well - yes, I think it would; in fact, I'm sure it would - many reasons for that, most obvious; you could, for example, spend years just - frankly - tarting-up your back catalogue rather than getting on with something new.  It CAN be done doesn't always mean it should be done: but now and then - it won't hurt!  And technically, preferably on rigid and unvarnished surfaces, it should be problem-free.  And that, your Honour, is my defence. 

Abbey's painting - sumptuous draperies!