Sometimes paintings need to be revisited. A painting isn’t done until it’s done. Often, when I think a painting is almost finished, I hang it in my home and live with it. Looking at it outside of my studio I notice little things I want to tweak. The painting may go back and forth between a room in the house and my studio several times before it’s complete. Occasionally I require a lot of time to see what a painting needs to become fully harmonious. The painting accompanying this blog shows the image on the left…how the painting looked as it lived on my wall for over a year, and, on the right. how I tweaked it. It took me a long time to figure out what I needed to change. A lot of the areas are subtle, a couple are more obvious. I reworked the arms and hair on the upper mermaid, thinned her tail and popped the contrast on both mermaids. I added the cascading starfish to balance the strong horizontals. In addition, I lightened some areas in the background and made the color stronger on the small fish. Now I’m happy with it.
