Here is my first set of finished Colour Diary group stripes.

I’m really pleased with how this has turned out.

The use of satin varnish to seal the panels has been great as it has unified the finish – as some colours become shinier than others.

I spent a lot of time agonising about the finish – the fact that you can see brush marks in some colours and not others – this is all dependent on the opacity of the paint/pigments and how many layers I have to apply. In the end I have had to just accept that is how it is going to be. If the colours were flat and had no aberrations then the panel may as well be a digital print out mounted on a panel. So I have come to accept that the deviation in surface and slightly imperfect lines indicate that I have had a hand in the creation. Something so perfect is impersonal, so something slightly imperfect is more personal, intimate and ‘open’ than something created otherwise.