Try, Try Again

Remember the Adirondack chairs on the beach. After all my fiddling and still not liking it, I realized that I didn't even like the set up. Why if you were on a lovely beach would you be sitting facing away from the water??? Also, my biggest mistake is to try to make a finished painting with only two or three layers. I know from everything I read that this is a mistake. I try to go too far too fast (get your mind out of the gutter!! :-) My second most serious problem is that I sketch my outlines too dark and in graphite. I am going to draw my outlines in this picture in watercolor pencil.


So, I have begun again and have just laid in some rough washes that I dabbed with tissue. So far all I've done is to show where the foreground is. I see I have to be careful not to have the three areas end up as thirds of the height. I'm a little shy to do the next step, but I think I am going to go to watercolor pencils to add some interest into the sky and decide where the horizon line will be.

I am hoping to add two Adirondack chairs with their backs to the viewer, which would have them facing the water. I took a photo of the back of a chair in the side garden yesterday so I will know how to draw it when the time comes.

I am seriously considering having the sun low in the sky so I can add some reds and golds to the sky with reflections on the water, if that is not too ambitious. I will show you the progress as it happens. For now I am planning to go very slowly so I don't forget and try to get it done in the next layer.

While I was out in the yard with my camera, I couldn't resist taking a few pix of some of the things that caught my eye.

We have a family in the bluebird house.

Well, as usual, the treadmill is calling to screeching at me, so I'd better get this body moving. I think I have the whole day to work play in my art room and am hoping to get a few more gesture sketches done, start a new repurposed journal, and do a bit of colored pencil and/or Neocolor II wax pastel work on the new WIP. I hope to have something to share tomorrow.

xoxo