Evening Glow Revisited

Evening Glow, 20x10, oil on canvas

"Evening Glow" was painted a year ago spring and is the bottom piece here.  I was never content with this painting I recently hung it in my studio to give myself time to really look at it and last weekend, with a vision in mind, reworked it. The beauty of reworking a painting for me is that the structure or foundation is all there and I just have to get the rhythm and flow going.

The first order of the day was to get rid of my hard edges on the trees, the bridge and the sky. The sky and its reflection were softened and blended to remove the "stained glass" appearance. With the softer blending of the "glow" I was able to add some reds and oranges around the center of the tree on the right to make the tree light up from the sun behind it. I then used a purple color as my "mother" color to give unity to the whole. I used it to soften the edges of the group of tree trunks on the right, in the mountains, in the grass and I added it to the evergreens color as well to bring out some depth to it, as I felt that tree was too flat. I added some warmth to the left bank of the stream leading to the reflection. The last thing was to bring out the second boy.