Started a new portrait of Eleanor. It's from a photo of her at Lindsey and Andrew's wedding, dressed in a bridesmaid dress with butterfly wings and blowing bubbles, but with a very serious and pensive expression. I can hear Steph telling me I'm working too small, but its on A2 paper even if it is a full-length picture. It's not as intimate as the portrait of Tom, but I didn't want to do exactly the same sort of painting again. I was looking for something a little different.

So far I've got a fluorescent pink and yellow underpainting, just obliterating the white of the paper. I printed out and gridded-up the photo and transferred the outlines onto the A2 paper using a mid-blue pastel. I checked and re-checked until I was happy. Then I filled in the areas of deepest shadow and darkest hue and fixed it with spray fixative. Then I started filling in the background, which is darker in hue than the pale-coloured fairy bridesmaid. The background is going to be quite vague, just suggesting the flagged floor and stone wall in the photo. But since Eleanor is in front of the background, that has to be painted in first so she can go over the top of it.

Happy with how it's going so far. When Steph was here I shouted at her a lot for telling me exactly what pastel to pick up next and make exactly what type of mark exactly where on the paper ("Paint your own bloody picture, this is my picture!"). And yet it's very scary doing it all by myself and I wish she was still here so she could tell me what to do.