Laying tile

Here is a way to avoid licking, or "worrying your strokes until they are lifeless. Pretend you are laying tile. Make the tile on your palette and than set it in place on your canvas. When you lay tile you don't shove them around in the bed of mortar. You lay a tile in the right place and leave it alone.

So mix the note, set it in place,
THEN PULL YOUR BRUSH AWAY!

If it is right, no licking or fooling with it is needed. If it is wrong, no amount of fooling with it will fix it. If the stroke is wrong, do one of two things, pull it out with the palette knife, or in practice if it is not too thick, you hit it again with a new stroke that is;

• The right note and obscures the old one
• Adds the missing element to correct the original stroke.

For example you might have the stroke the wrong shape, if you can, add a new stroke that brings it to the right shape that works. If you cut back in with the background and make it the right shape, that works too. But what you don't want to do is try to shove the paint around on your canvas until it is right. The more times you touch a stroke, the weaker it becomes.There is a beauty in the look of a painting that has been fearlessly executed. This is particularly important if you are painting a loose, premier coup painting.

Richard Schmid famously said " loose is how a painting looks and not how it was made".