Reworking it

Remember this one from earlier this summer?  There were aspects of it that I liked, such as the mountains, but I was never very happy with the foreground.

So I cut it off.  I've done some cropping before, but this was the most radical one yet, especially since it involved a saw.    But I was in a rather frustrated mood on Saturday, having just returned from a show in which I received no reward despite expecting one.  And really, it shouldn't be a big deal.  It's happened before, will happen again, and the pieces that did win were certain deserving.  But this one bothered me for some reason.

I moped around for a bit, then decided I needed to just do something.  My daughter has found that her soccer playing is better when she is mad at herself - I wanted to see if it would work for my painting.  This time it did.   

This is probably the most reworked painting I have ever done, even requiring a title change.   Now I just need to figure out what to do with the other half.

First Light 24x9 pastel, copyright 2012

One sunrise, but not the same

      Sunrise, First of December 6x6 oil, copyright 2011

December Sunrise 12x9 pastel, copyright 2011

A first for me, two different paintings from the same reference photograph.  The first was just a quick study, painted the same day I took the photo.  It came out a bit softer and more muted, in part because I was spent perhaps 15 more minutes on it than I should have, and was starting to make mud.  I stopped when I realized it, made a few corrections then quit.  The second one I finished just yesterday, and perhaps overcompensated a bit for the earlier painting's softness, though the colors look a bit too saturated on my monitor.

Looking at the two of them together, I can't decide if one is really better than the other as both capture some aspects of the mood of the moment.  I'm not sure if it's the media or light in the studio or my subconscious that made them so different.  It's an exercise worth trying again with another photo.

Edit:  The pastel image has been revised, and is now a bit closer to the real thing.