Looking Back Over my Shoulder

When your pastels are on strike, it’s sometimes good to look back and take stock. This is one of my earlier landscapes from 2014, I think. 

At art school part of the learning process are the ''crits'' or ''critiques'', you hang your work and all of the prep sketches, reference photos up and then your tutor and fellow students let rip. Mortifiying, yes! Painful, yes! Edifying nope...... nervous breakdown, yes! But educational and an eye opener! Sometimes you are so involved in what you do, you are blind for obvious mistakes. Let’s take a closer look! 

To be honest, I still love the palette, early evening, rosy light! I like the softer, less detailed underpainting look, especially in the foreground where I now love to pack in detail. The lily pads I find adorable still and now for the downside! 

Where I live and where I obviously sketch and paint has artificial waterways cut to help drain the boggy ground and I still like that direct cut look but here I think the right bank could have done with a softer line. Maybe smudgy grasses to soften the line. 

The area on the left (red circle) is very pale, composition should always lead into a painting and I think this pale area draws the eye out of the painting. I think there should have been a paler area on the horizon between the two trees. Finally, that fussy tree, the focal point. I'm not sure if it really is fussy or I see it as fussy because I wasn’t happy with it and kept fussing. I like lots of fiddling on my trees but this took the biscuit! Proficient fussiness, and that not being able to put the pastels down. Here a bit more green, nope too much! There a few more air holes, too many pink blobs. Slap on the greens (never my favourite) too much, more air holes, yep you get the idea. 

Having taken a look back, I still like so much on this painting that I would hang it on my wall (always the decider for me) but I'm certainly not blinded by whats ''off ''!

 One important ''rule'' in art is never to discuss what you don’t like in a painting, obviously very important when taking to galleries or clients. However, you only learn from mistakes and taking a good look at what you do can push you onward or turn off in another direction altogether. 

One of my favourite poems is The Road Not Taken'' by Robert Frost, 

'' Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.'' 

Looking back at your work and rediscovering it doesn’t mean regression, it is progression!