Something Bothered Me

Heron Lake Autumn, 20 x 30, pastel on Mi-Tientes Touch paper

Heron Lake Autumn (version a)

Look familiar? If you've been following my posts you'll know that I featured this painting not long ago. Well, it isn't exactly this painting because what you see is the updated version. As I came into my studio each morning I glanced at version A sitting on the easel and felt uncomfortable about it. This went on for about a week until I knew I had to do a little more work on it or so I thought. Anyway, I went ahead and put more sky in the water reflection lower far right hand corner. Also I enriched the darks with more color and lightened the darks of the far hillside across the lake. Also added rich deep magenta's to the center left. And lastly, I added another tree on the hilltop middle right side. I listened to my intuition as I worked not stopping until I felt satisfied. Living with it for a week or so I decided to call it done. I feel the composition is better and the colors more reflective of what I intended it to be. Scrubbing away, taking off layers of pastel is part of the game. It's very important for me to be at peace with my work. So if a painting isn't framed and out on exhibition, anything can happen. No, I don't make this a habit but on occasion it does happen. Looking back I realize that I declared it done too soon. Ah well, such is life with this artist.

What do you think?