This painting, though pleasing, seemed to lack something. It was just there with nothing special.
I started my examination by creating a smaller, 5x7, with ink and watercolor on paper to explore new colors, forms, and values.
My first step was to do an ink line drawing from the original.
Over this ink sketch I added watercolor indicate the continuation of the pinks and lavenders into the salt marsh to replace some of the green.
Adding the color to the clouds, pointed out another basic difficulty with the original piece - that is that the bottoms of the clouds are all too flat. The study, however, was too far along to make changes in either the drawing or the watercolor, so I sprayed the watercolor with fixative and applied a layer of clear gesso. This will help support substantial revisions when I apply the pastel.
This is the final rework of the 5x7. I reduced the clouds by about 1/3, softened all the edges, expanded the water in the foreground, and reduced the colors to 3 - blue, orange, and purple (with just a touch of pink). Then I added just a little green for contrast and punched up the colors and values in the salt marsh. Took a new photo which is much better.
