Losing Even More

For three days after the watercolor workshop I mentioned in my last post I had to take care of other priorities so I didn’t paint.  I did think about how I could make my painting better.  That’s what the other side of the paper is for, right?

Here’s the old photo that I used as my source:

Here’s the painting I did at the workshop:

I realized that I needed to lose more of the original photo.  I needed less of the foreground and a bigger barn.  The barn was supposed to be the focal point but it got lost in the trees.  So I planned the new painting around the barn.

I wasn’t sure whether to include the bare trees on the left so I tried a trick from another great painting teacher, Jim Glover.  I sketched the trees with a marker on an old transparency (leftover from my overhead projector days).  Then I placed that where I would put the trees in the painting to see if it added anything interesting.  They seemed to lead the eye back across the painting and push the duller trees on the left into the background.

Here’s the second version of the painting including the bare trees:

I definitely like the second version much better. It’s closer to where I aim to be, but not there yet.   A third version?  We’ll see.