When  there are groups of figures in a painting that are close together, it is important that limbs appear to belong to the correct person. There are a few arms reaching over the stoves but not all the complete figures are visible. Also I want the faces of all the figures to be focussed on their tasks, save one who will reach out to the viewer with a wave!

A second figure has been added to the foreground. A rather tall, bearded young male leaning on to the end of the bench.

I have had a couple of days hiatus from my art work but have spent some time today adding some utensils to the bench top. I am not completely happy with the elliptical perspective but will make slight adjustments when I paint. If I over sketch at this stage, the canvas becomes a bit grubby with the graphite.

I have adder her hand resting on her knuckles on the bench top. I may need to make slight adjustments when I paint. I have also started to add some of the utensils, which will be scattered on bench tops throughout the painting. It will be the shadows that give things form but I do not draw them in before I paint.

I shall continue with my feminine consumer series but felt that I needed change so I have also begun to add the figures to my next oil painting based on the idea of a cooking school. The pencil work is quite faint because I don't want the graphite to affect the paint. To give an idea of scale, the painting is approximately 90cm by 101cm. The hands in any figure painting provide the greatest challenge for me. The most common fault that artists make is to make them too small. A single hand can almost cover a face! Of course when fingers are bent in different directions it can appear smaller.

I have to say that i am a little disappointed in the shoe print. There are a couple of lines taken out that shouldn't have been, the ink isn't evenly distributed and the are a couple of over-cuts. That being said, I have to remember that I don't possess a lino press, so the print was done using hand pressure with a roller and the tools I use need to be upgraded. The major over cuts can be filled and the ink distribution problem can be addressed, but the missing lines will have to stay missing. I must add though, that I feel that one of the attractions of a hand done lino print is its propensity to imperfections. I may complete another block of the same drawing at a later time but, in the meantime I will continue my drawing in preparation for a painting of handbags and my oil painting based on a cooking school which has been in hiatus.

The shoes are taking shape on the lino block and the textures covering them. The background will be quite plain in contrast to the shoe textures. There is still some more to remove but the blue areas will be the printed image. Not forgetting that the image will be reversed. Even though I have an image in my mind I am never sure with a print how it will look. That is the charm - the unexpected.