"Red Shed"

"Red Shed"
8"x8"

Well, the first one is finished...I don't know that it turned out quite the way I had originally imagined it, but it will have to do. Somehow, my sketch has more balance and energy...too much concern with painting clean, straight lines has diminished those positive attributes.

Once I had finished the painting, I went back and looked at my sketch and realized that one possible problem was the background foliage. In my sketch, I had broken the mass of trees into two parts, with the corner of the background structure jutting out against the flat sky.

In the little study, and in the final painting, the foliage area had grown and now rounded that corner behind the building.

Thinking that perhaps this chance was affecting the balance of the elements, I scanned the painting and then Photoshopped the sky back into the scan. Somehow that change made me feel better, so I decided to take the risk and do the same in the painting.

I carefully masked the shape of the building with masking tape, then scrubbed out the foliage in area that concerned me. I tried to go light on the pressure, to lessen the damage to the surface of the paper.

Once that was done, I removed the masking tape, and carefully flushed more Cobalt Blue into the area to match up with the rest of the sky. The top painting is the result. The bottom is what it looked like before I made that last change.

I'm not sure that it really helped matters. I think the geometric arrangement of the overlapping structures is more dominant in the final version, but you could also argue that the foliage shape helped to soften those hard edges and balanced the two corners (lower left and upper right). I'm not sure. Based on the pencil sketch, I had really liked the arrangement, and I wanted to stay as close to that model as I could.