As I have mentioned in some of my previous blog posts, many of the pieces I share are very small studies. The purpose of them is to hopefully create something interesting enough to eventually turn into a much larger piece. This was one of my first attempts at this, and in truth it really isn’t that big, and it was actually started quite some time ago but I never fully felt like I liked it as much as the study. This 9×12 is based on a much smaller 5×7 study Waterlilies.
I tried to follow the same process as the smaller version, because I loved the colors, textures and composition, but it is completely impossible to recreate something perfectly and for me, this was just a small reminder of that.
I noticed that I was being somewhat timid with the paint and it seemed to show in that it feels like the piece is sort of patched together with the different colors of paint where as in the study it felt more natural and cohesive all the way through. I didn’t completely hate it at this stage but I also wasn’t completely loving it.
Once I felt like I had enough paint down I started focusing on connecting all of the patchy areas of the piece while not making it look too muddy or blended. I left this painting like this for a very long time, literally for years, but was never really fully happy with it. Something wasn’t completely right but I didn’t really want to look at it anymore so I set it aside and it got lost in a pile of other misfit or incomplete paintings.
It wasn’t until very recently that I was reorganizing my studio that I pulled this piece out again and realized what it was that was bothering me. The dark blob up on the horizon line was way too big and didn’t seem very natural. In this piece there are not too many areas of just one solid color on its own, they are all sort of mingling and blending into one another, this blob is the only area that is not really touched by another color and it was drawing a little too much attention where I felt it was hard to notice anything else about the piece. So I painted over some of it to make it smaller and give it a little more of a natural edge across the top. I also added a few other color notes along the horizon line and the sky. It never ceases to amaze me how a just few small changes can completely change the piece!