Hope's Art Journey

This is my second 48 x 60 painting after 10 days.  The patch of pine trees on the left were much harder than I expected.  It took a lot of reworking, gessoing and more reworking of areas.  The back marsh looks a little pink in this photo.  It's more orange.  Anyway, not a bad start but still a long way to go.  At this point, it seemed smart to do the sky to make sure the sky holes in the trees are correct.  Also, it is needed to see if the color tone is good overall.  [...]

  After my trip to Suwannee, I had about 50 more photos.  Nothing was perfect so I went through all the photos I had in my files and started reviewing the existing painting.  It was way too orange.  I found a photo with the reflection of the back tree clump and put that in the water.  It did bring the eye up and add some interest.  Then, I added some mud on the left where the reflection of the grasses seemed so solid.  That helped as well as did some breaks in the reflection with water.  But the main problem was in the [...]

  This is where I was last week and really not happy with the pattern of the grasses in the front.  Plus, I needed more research for the next painting.  I took 4 days off and drove to Suwannee to take pictures.  Of course the tides were not the same as this shot nor were the colors.  But, I did get some pictures to help me decide what to do.  Gee, maybe I should have done a small one first.  However, as I read that suggestion (and have tried it) there is a lot of difference in what works in small format [...]