Join me on a wild ride as I resurrect a long-abandoned painting. Watch as I transform this neglected canvas into a gorgeous, serene nude surrounded by lush flowers and geometric patterns. I'll walk you through my process, sharing the challenges I faced and how I overcame them. From fixing proportions to adding to and adjusting the details, you'll see how a few tweaks can breathe new life into a piece.

Hi, how you doing today? We are going to be fixing this painting. I started it back in June or July last year, so it's been nearly a year. Lots of people coming to the studio saw it as I was making it, and many had opinions about it, which completely knocked me off course. She's been stuck facing the wall for almost a year, out of action, and it's time to actually fix her.
I'm going to show you the bits that I like and the bits that I'm not so sure about, what I'd like to change. Then you can watch me paint, and we'll see if I can bring her back from the brink.
Let's start with the things I like. I really like the overall proportions of her body. I love these geometric patterns on the cushions and want to do more of that. I love both of her feet - this one with the drip, and this one which has got a real Quentin Blake style thing going on. I love the wine bottle down there and the big fat Blue Cat. Perfection. I love her bouncy boobies, her big butt, her elbows - lots and lots to love.
What I don't love and would like to fix: This yellow is wrong. I never use this yellow, and I don't know why I used it here. Her face - I got way too tight when I was doing it. I like the different colors in it, but compared to the rest of the body, it's way too tight. Overall, all of these flowers - I love how dense this section is, but everything's just a bit too small. It feels kind of sweaty, like it's too tight, too try-hard. It's just not what I wanted to express. The blue sky behind her is just not doing the thing, you know? I want to fix that and bring some more of these geometric patterns over to this side. This hand got all messed up - it's one of those things where I thought, "Oh, just put it in and then I'll fix it later," but I never got around to it.
So that's where we're at and what we're gonna try to fix. I'm just gonna put some music on, get the paints out, and basically obliterate. Let's see how it goes.
[Next day]
It's the next day, and I got on pretty well with what I was doing. Let me take you through what I did and what I'm gonna do next.
The main thing I did was darken the background and add this cushion here so she's actually resting her arm on something. We fixed this hand and mostly just generally fixed the issues I was having with the composition. We added in these huge flowers, which have balanced things out a little bit more. I've extended this section of the cushions out here so it's more balanced, and we've got more huge flowers coming down here.
Her head is now much smaller, which means that proportionally, the exaggeration is all in the legs and thigh, which feels much more balanced. I also knocked back some of the brights that were happening down at the bottom here. I fixed this yellow, so it's more of a warm yellow now.
What I want to do today is her face and her hair. I want to color match her face and hand better with the rest of her body. I want to add this orange dirtiness to this portion down here - the value is now much better, you can see the wine glass and the wine bottle better, but I just want to dirty it up a bit so it's not so vivid. There are a few details missing here that I want to add in, and obviously the flowers - this yellow is very bright at the moment, so I want to knock that back a little bit and add in the finishing details.
[Later]
I think the only thing I have left to do on this painting now is sort out the face and the hand, get those color tones right, and obviously do the face, which I wish I hadn't left till last because I'm feeling a bit nervous about it. I've already done it several times, and it hasn't worked out the way I wanted it to. So I think I'm gonna call it quits for the day and come back tomorrow to fix those bits.
We've got a lot more depth and dimension on these flowers now. I'm not sure they're exactly the way I want them to be - I need to sit with them for a bit and let them settle, let the paint dry, see how I feel about them. We finished the detail on the cushions down here and muddied up this bit so it lines up more with the top section of the sofa. I also brought some of the green over to this section, so we've got a little bit of balance there, and we've got another geometric pattern just to lift it a little bit.
[Final day]
We finished her! Isn't she pretty? I didn't film the last little bit where I finished off her face and her hands. I was feeling a bit nervous, and I just wanted to sort of get into the zone without having to worry about the camera or anything. So I did do that bit without you. I am sorry about that, but yeah, she's finished, and I love her. She is so, so pretty.
Her face came out really well. I'm really pleased with it. She's so pretty, and she looks so peaceful and serene, just like she's gazing into space, lost in thought. I actually went to see a wonderful exhibition about the forgotten women of impressionism, and one of the things that I really loved was this idea that when one little part of a painting is quite detailed and well described, the brain sort of fills in the gaps for you. So you can see her mouth is literally just a smudge, and yet when you're looking at it from afar, it totally reads as a mouth.
I really love this passage on this side, the flowers against the geometrics. That's really pleasing. Down to this fat, old blue cat - I haven't touched the foot, that's still possibly my favorite part of the whole painting. I love the wine bottle and the glass. It's nice that you can see them more clearly now that the value on this section has been altered.
These huge yellow flowers are really exciting. I feel like that's exactly what it needed. Before, with all the tiny flowers, it felt too busy, like there was too much disparate information going on. Now these beautiful flowers really help to center the eye on the figure. They're lovely and splashy.
We did this cushion so her arm is resting on something, and we sorted out this hand, which was a bit of a mess. I am completely in love with her. I think she's absolutely beautiful. It's such a transformation from how she looked before, and this is much more like the painting that I wanted to make originally, before I got tangled up with everybody else's ideas and opinions and just kind of lost my way with it.
I'm so glad that she is finally finished, and I can let her go and move on to the next painting. I have so many ideas backed up and a stack of giant canvases over here in the corner. I'm itching to get them on the easel and get on with a few more things.
Thank you so much for coming along with me on this journey. If you like this video, please do subscribe and maybe watch another one. If you like this one, you'll probably like some others, and it shows YouTube that my channel is worth being shown to other people. So you'll be doing me a huge favor. Have a lovely week, and I'll see you next week with a new video. Bye!