Usually, for me, the pencil drawing precedes a watercolor. That is not because the pencil drawing is a preliminary study. While drawing, I see that a certain idea also has potential in color and (usually) works well or even better on a larger scale. In this case, it was the other way around. I had been struggling for quite some time with the background of a watercolor I was working on at the time. After having tucked it away in a drawer for at least half a year, I decided on a radical intervention when I took it out again. I simply cut away the residual shapes between the Z-chair pattern. All or nothing! That turned out to be a stroke of genius, because by mounting it in front of a (also watercolored) plane with some space in between, the light comes into play, creating a pleasant confusion: Rietveld. As far as I was concerned, that had pencil drawing potential too.