10At long last I've come back to this painting. As a couple of months have passed since last working on it, I felt I needed to prep the surface to receive new paint. To do that, I first brushed the painting lightly to remove any dust (or, as necessary in my house, dog hairs), then painted a couple of layers of dilute unpigmented egg wash across the whole panel. This seems to help new layers of paint take more readily to the already curing paint film. Yolk to water proportion is probably about 1:5, or slightly thinner. The painting still doesn't have the kind of resolution of forms nor the color/value contrasts that I'm looking for in the finished work, so I've started to strengthen all the shadows and edges; first with a greenish-umber pigment, then ivory black. I think I'll likely do something as well to the negative space below and beyond the table to place the palette and table more firmly in space, and in the context of Olsen's studio. Probably, I'll show a glimpse of one of his paintings in the background.
