Continued

New Paintings - What Do You Do When It Just Doesn’t Work?

We’ve all had that experience….starting a painting with enthusiasm, only to realize part way through that the painting isn’t working.  Perhaps it was that new tube of purple you thought you’d try….or a new brush that wqs awkward to use.  Or maybe you don’t even know why the painting didn’t work….what should you do?

First, get some space from the painting.  Breathe deep and tape it on your wall….upside down!  When something is hung upside down, the errors in composition are more evident. Is the painting symmetrical? Did you create interesting shapes? Did you lose your focus? Some of these errors are correctable. More...

Now, turn the painting right side up.  Look at your values….your lights and darks and medium tones.  Can you find these values throughout the painting?  Are your dark values dark enough? Is your focus located where the lightest light meets the darkest dark? 

Finally, take a good look at your color choices.  Is this a warm or cool painting?  Are all the primaries represented? Are your colors washed out? Do any colors look glaringly out of place?  Have you used complementary colors to their best advantage?

If you still can’t find the reason the painting didn’t work, then change it up.  Do something dramatic.  In this case, I started with a lovely, but relatively hum-drum, summer landscape that I painted at the Audubon Property in the Berkshires.  My painting looked hum-drum, too.  I shifted the foreground, darkened the waters and reflections,  altered the vegetation in the back.  I tried this painting several times, but it just wasn’t working….until I changed the season.  By making this a fall scene, I was able to introduce an entirely new and vivid palette.  I simplified the foreground, taking out a large log and adding a visual pathway into the painting.  Lastly, I edited the trees on each side, picking and choosing the ones that I wanted to include.  The result is an engaging landscape that I’m thrilled to have painted.

I entered this painting in the New Jersey Watercolor Society's Associate Members Annual Exhibit and I won an Award for Excellence! The moral of the story is .....don't give up. When you feel that your painting can be a really good painting, trust yourself and stay with it.