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| 'A Wonderful World' 19x25 pastel ©Karen Margulis available $350 |
Do you save your old paintings? I mean the really old ones? I probably wouldn't have saved so many old (bad) painting but I have an unused room that has been my art storage. There is plenty of room so I have all the old paintings piled up! Every once in awhile I pull one and see what I can do to make it better. It is a great way to make you think and apply what you have learned over the years of study and practice!
This weekend I took out a big painting that I had done back in 2005 when I first started painting. It was probably one of my first big paintings. It had good bones but it definitely needed some help to bring it to life!
Have a look at the original and see what you would do to make it better. Now scroll up to the refreshed paintings to see the changes I made. What did I do? (answers below)
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| The original painting before I refreshed it. |
- Overall the painting was too spotty and dull. The dark areas in the grasses were too random and spotty. There was no sense of light even though I had painted shadows on the sand. I DID NOT brush anything off. I just went into the painting with stronger and bolder marks.These marks went right over the existing layers.
- The first thing I did was to connect the dark shapes and simplify the grass marks and shapes. I used more green to unify all of the spots of color.
- I then redid the shadows by adding a darker sand color with a bit of blue from the sky (see Patreon for in-depth study of shadows)
- I added brighter/lighter sand in the sunlit areas. I pushed the pastel hard to make thick and confident marks. I had nothing to lose here so I just went for it!
- I lightened the sky and the clouds.
- I added the hint of a wave and softened the sea color.
- I repainted the wispy sea oats so they didn't look like dark stiff sticks in the ground. I wanted them to blow in the breeze.
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| A close up of the new marks |
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