My new painting is rubbish - and I'm delighted.

A strange thing to say you might think but I've been painting with Gimp and other packages for years now. What I always told myself in a continuing fit of artistic arrogance, was that if I was going to paint properly then I wouldn't use any of those gimmicks.

    Chief Gimmick amongst them was layers. (yes "amongst" is a real word - if you're English, anyway.)

    It's cheating, I told myself. If you had a piece of paper or canvas, or whatever you draw/paint/scribble on, then you'd only have one layer. So do it properly.

    That was a mask (pardon the pun) for the fact that I didn't understand layers or even the concept.

   But for a couple of weeks now, when I can get time to turn my pc, on I've been struggling with the incredibly (for me) complex problem of layers. 

    I must have the IQ of your average carrot because it's taken me all that time to get it.

    And here's my first (unfinished) painting using layers. I won't finish it because it rubbish. Now, finally I've got the hang of layers, even though I only used three - baby steps and all that. But I shall use them henceforth. It doesn't help that Gimp 2.10.4 is so vastly different from what went before. It's taken me a dozen years just to understand and remember that.

    Don't get me started on masks and all the other billions things left to master. I won't live to three hundred years old.