There was still not much daylight when I got home from work when I started the commission, so I waited until the weekend to do the study. I can finish up a painting in artificial light, but I don't like to start it that way. I started with the study,
Watercolor studies should stay pretty lose and should be mostly about planning where to leave the white of the paper. This one was also about shades of blue. Since there is so much blue, what is the shade difference between the blue water and the two blue shirts? The only thing really separating them is the different shade of blue, so it should be right. On this study I also tried an experiment using salt on the wet paint of the water and the tie-die shirt, since I thought it might help achieve the soft light in the reference.
I thought the painting would be easy. The kids are from the back, no faces, I know how to paint water and sand, the colors are already great, and the red hat is obviously the subject. I was wrong, this painting was hard.
Saturday morning I finished the study, transferred the drawing for the painting and started the painting Sunday morning. I was trying for a soft wet on wet effect for the water and I worked on trying to achieve that until mid-afternoon Sunday, when I had to give up. There are moments in painting when it is time to keep pushing through to something great and there are moments when you went to far and the painting cannot be saved. It takes practice to learn the difference. I tried pushing through for an hour, but had to admit it could not be saved.
I felt like I wasted an entire weekend and now I was not going to have natural light for another week and it was really hard to go to work on Monday. Then I realized that a big part of my problem was pressuring myself to get most of the painting done in a weekend. It also seemed like I developed more contrast in my landscapes and had not painted children in a while, which need less contrast. I leave skin tones very light in my watercolors, the lights are lighter so the darks can stay lighter. Dark skin tones in watercolor quickly look muddy and grey. Lighter skin tones means everything in the painting has to be lighter, so everything looks like it belongs in the same painting.
So, the next weekend I had the new drawing ready and I started over, starting with the water in light subtle layers. The water took a long time to get the look of the reflected soft clouds, but it led the way to a much better painting,
Since I had to start over and was pressured by time and only a few weeks before my framer closed for good, I took the reference to the framer before I even started the second painting and picked a mat and frame. This is very risky and in the end the framer changed the inner mat because it was the wrong red, but it took the pressure off. I picked up the framed painting before last weekend, admired it all weekend, and then took it to the shipper last Monday.
Not only did I find a good shipper, but they patiently tolerate me as I am unable to leave my painting and get chatty. Leaving my painting with the shipper is like sending my child off to college, off to have their own new life without needing me anymore.
For a month it felt like I was working two jobs and I am glad for a rest.
Next week: A new TV and a permanent job.
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