Changing direction

I thought I'd post this painting up since it showed a good example of loosing your way and 'changing a color direction'.

The final painting

Title: Peruvian Lily and vegetables Size: 30x48

I nearly always work from a color plan, sometimes I store this in my head, but more often than not I generate a little thumbnail of my planned colors. Here's an example of one.

Color plan.

However despite working from this carefully considered plan, there can be a point in the painting of the subject where you realize it's just not working.

Photo of the painting near the end, but not working...yet

At this point you need to rapidly rethink and often repaint to make new colors and new designs work. From the image above you can see how I lost me way and floundered before dramatically changing the colors of the background darks (in the middle of the picture). Then in turn, some of the elements on the table needed a repaint to come in to line with the new and exciting design.

Sometimes it's important to let the painting speak to you and work from that, especially nearing the end of a painting. Forgetting the old ideas or plans, can build for a stronger finished painting.

This rethink, is a scary time, when you can feel everything has gone wrong and you're never going to be able to pull together a strong piece. But on occasion, ironically enough, these times are when you produce your very best of work.

Though different from its original plan the end result is powerful and I think a great color choice. Sometimes a painting just needs to evolve as you go along...

An additional image of a random detail.