Cardboard fish, realised.

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Fish, above, made into cardboard manquettes from the designs of yesterday's doodle

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The figurine is there to show how the pieces might scale as playground sculptures. The clean shapes have something of the quality of tin-plate toys, and the next thing might be to experiment with painting these in the sort of bright patterns that colour such tin-plate toys.

The trick is in treading that line between the mimetic and the fully abstract: if the fish are too realistic, like Britain's toys, then they lack a certain mystery, because they fail to engage the imagination. If they are wholly abstract, they simply become as building blocks, and would inspire only the most imaginative.

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The wind among the reeds

The wind among the reeds, oil on card, 12.5 x 9.1 cm

Garage, Trindade

Garage, Trindade, Oil on card, 9.2 x 8.8 cm

I'd hoped to be using bright colours today but the weather turned out hazy.

I'm using a technique in which paint is removed after application by blotting the card with paper: suggestion being a more forceful tool than statement; something I learnt from the symbolists, and a mentality that seems to be a staple of etching.