Sunlight and Storm Clouds (Oil Bar Painting as of July 7, 2013)

Sunlight and Storm Clouds (Oil Bar Painting as of July 7, 2013), a photo by randubnick on Flickr.

Here is my oil bar painting in progress as it looked two days ago (July 7, 2013). This painting is loosely based on a photo that I took from Obear Park here in Beverly, MA, of evening sunlight and storm clouds over Salem, just across the water. (The photo is posted on this site, June 19, 2013). After I posted the July 6th version of this painting, I realized that some of the main trees were not squared up, but were leaning slightly to the right. So on July 7th, I set out to fix that. I used a straight edge and painted white lines down the middle of the problematic trees, and then re-painted the tree trunks and tree tops to solve the problem. While I was at it, I also adjusted the placement and height of the trees, making the tree closest to the water a bit taller. This made the perspective a bit easier to understand and also created a central focus for the picture. The added bonus was that when I adjusted the bottom part of the tree trunks, all the diagonal lines of the patches of sunlight in the grass began to line up. So in the end, the painting got better because I had to fix those damned tilting trees. It's hard to do, but I try to be grateful for the mistakes I make when I am painting, because, as one of my favorite painting teachers pointed out, mistakes present you with problems to solve, and that is how you learn. (Thank you Robert Daigle, wherever you are.) Still more to do, though. To be continued. . . .