Flooded St Johns River

Flooded St Johns River - Fall, oil on linen, 24x30

Here is a painting I started a year ago. At that time I thought it was pretty much done but then I did a touch up that just destroyed it for me. It wasn't much but it doesn't always take much. Into the closet it went, face to the wall!

Feeling like it was time to salvage that 'so close and yet so far away' piece I got it out of 'time out' and decided to take a whole new approach to it.

Original "finished" loose painting

In the first rendition I was going for a loose, impressionistic approach, which as many of you know is not really my style, but sometimes you just have to get out of your comfort zone and try something foreign. I enjoyed the loose strokes and thought it a successful painting. Until I decided to darken and add depth to the trees at the water line. UGH. I used an almost black color and it just killed the painting for me. Not a hard thing to fix but I could not face it. So be it. I also felt that the reflection was getting too fragmented and not reading so much as a whole shape.

On this approach, using the same painting, I decided to break up the loose brush strokes with smaller, more directional individual strokes but still keeping the impressionist tone to it. The scene just calls for that. But this approach is also not 'normal' for me. I have done the broken stroke application before but I am still feeling my way around it. It certainly has its place I am discovering.

On this second run through I had finished it but it seemed to have taken on a somber tone that I was not thrilled with so I did another pass through lightening the colors back up. It is still a bit somber from the original finished painting, but for now I like it as is. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?

Block in for St Johns River-going for large color shapes