So now I am fixing them up. The first one went well - at least I thought it did before I looked at this before-and-after blog post. This is a small painting, 6" x 9" or so, of a back-lit wave. The sun was low on the horizon and so intense that I had to squint the whole time I was painting; eventually my eyes started to sting and I had to keep one of them closed it was tearing so badly. When I got the painting inside I thought it looked washed out - not surprising when you are painting in such strong light (makes it hard to see the values). Karen had the same wave in her painting and she had a much better underplane on the bottom of the wave -it really looked like it was coming out over the rock - and a better silouette of the shadow side of the wave aginst the ocean. When I saw hers I made an immediate mental note to fix mine as soon as I got home and it was the first one I pulled out to rework in the studio.

And I do think I did well with it, but, but, but...something is always lost. Looking at the two images side by side I think I lost a little of the joie de vivre that was in the original sketch and I see that I could have gone in a completely different direction - I could have kept it in a very high impressionist value range, moving and singing in atmosphere, water, and light - Turner and Monet linking arms and dancing. Must fix it - next time.