The sun is still setting. Outside, the sky is overcast and washing everything with a glaze of Payne's Gray.

Angelique's classmate C. left for the day but is coming back tomorrow so that they can continue working on a joint school project. I think we'll have halabos na hipon for lunch tomorrow.

I decided to call it a day for painting at 5:30 PM. I've already gone over "the hump", i.e. the most difficult phase of painting during which all painting problems and obstacles are solved and overcome. This is usually the time when whatever I'm painting becomes miraculously finished before I know it.

Still, I will not fall into the trap I used to fall into when I was still working at the office, when I was always only too glad to be able to finish a painting and then move on to other obligations. I am compelling myself to work slowly and surely, and enjoy every minute and every second of my painting process.

I'm allowing the painting to converse with me. Indeed, it is a window through which the characters I am painting look into the studio and the world I live in.