I've had some good studio days recently.  I've started several pieces of new work - although I think of them as a continuation of the work I was making last summer rather than truly "new".  It feels good to be making again.  A relief actually.  Because, looking back, I feel as though I've been stuck for the last six months.   

However I'm feeling clearer about what I want to do next.  Which makes it easier to work out how I'm going to get there.  I will need to spend some time experimenting and sampling to find ways to get the effects I want and, more uncomfortably, I think I need to let go of some of my favourite techniques for a while.  They won't give me the look I am after and also I think I have got into too much of a routine with some of them - it's all a little too predictable.  

Without giving much away, this is the list I've written in my sketchbook: 

• edges: blurred, diffuse
• layered, textured
• aged, decaying, worn, eroded
• change
• merging and disappearing
• mist, fog, shorelines, reflections

It's a guide, not a prescription.  We'll see where it leads.  

In the meantime, some good advice I was given was to keep making my existing work while I develop the new.  So there are five or six new pieces coming into shape on my studio wall.  I am liking these muted colours very much.