The next stage of the latest canvas - the underpainting. I put in thin washes of block colour. Brown for carrots, red for tomatoes, green for leaves and so on. Not just colours straight out of the tubes, I mix up an approximation of the colour I want. For example you can probably see a range of greens from the bright yellow green of the carrot leaves to the blue-green of the broccoli.

The paint is thinned with lots of matte acrylic medium and water. This is for a number of reasons. The thicker the paint on the canvas the harder it is to paint over it, so I want to start out thin and watery and build up thickness as I go. Also I still want to be able to see my drawing through the paint for a little while yet. For the same reason, I am not adding much titanium white to the paints yet as this always makes the paint opaque.

I need to be able to see the underdrawing because I'm looking critically at it and fiddling with it. I don't want to be simply colouring in the shapes. Instead each stage of the painting refines and improves on the last.