BLOG about PAINTING

I’m starting a new blog about my ongoing explorations of gouache painting.  I want to put up the ‘good’ stuff and the ‘bad’ (or unsuccessful) pieces.  This way, I can see any progression that I am - or am not - making in my efforts to learn this new medium and to loosen up my painting style.

So, to start off, here are two pieces that I did yesterday.  I did them at home, primarily working from a quick thumbnail that I did a couple of days ago out at the Cowichan Estuary, shown here:

Here is my first attempt:

I had several problems with it:

I didn’t like the colour of the background.  I found it too ‘blue’ compared to the rest of the painting, so it didn’t really fit in.

I thought that the patches of marsh grass looked too round, rather than being flat areas.

I also thought that the shapes were too similar in size.

Finally, I found that I was fiddling too much with the paint.  

So I had another go.  This time, I tried to work fast, just laying down colour and not overthinking things.  Here’s what I managed to produce in roughtly 1/4 the time it took to do the first piece:

While I do prefer it, it’s still not where I want to be.  Oh, well…