While consigning paper to the circular file is no great feat, it requires mental toughness to destroy paintings. Hope springs eternal that they can be fixed, rescued, reborn, and so on. The best option, in my view, is simply to start another right on top. This works brilliantly if and only if the offending painting was done in acrylic. Just gesso over it and Bob's your uncle, with the bonus of some free texture. Unfortunately, I am an oil painter and I don't think it's recommended to gesso over oil; please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thus, in our basement there is only a small collection of sketchbooks but quite a number of nice big ugly canvases, all just daring the Thames to flood. There were so few drawings that I was inspired to take digitals of them at least this afternoon.
Conclusions:
1. There are hardly any. Turns out that I had the common sense to turf as I went.
2. My most successful drawings are inspired by life drawing.
3. I have absolutely no ability to draw myself. Even if I occasionally capture the intent stare necessary to self-portraiture, Jon inevitably comments: "Whoever that is, she scares me."
4. I can get a fair likeness of others, thank heavens, as long as I use pencil or conte to model the contours. Pen, she better for chairs and the like.
This is the preparatory drawing for "Pensive" (see "Size Matters" 27/10/14 in the archive).