Evolution of a Painting

I was struck with the beauty of some ponds near my home and began to start to paint them. This lead to going back and looking at Monet's work, and I developed an interest in water lilies as a subject. The nice greens of the lily pads along with the color of reflections in the water and the light yellow and purple lilies make them a painter's dream subject. So calm and placid too. So I did one or two water lily paintings about a year ago. Here is one of those paintings.

Then I started looking closer at the water lilies and painted this painting.

This last week I had the inspiration, that sounds pretty high-minded, so let's say I had the idea, to paint some of our goldfish from our backyard pond in a lily pad setting. So based on a photo I had taken I did this thumbnail sketch adding our goldfish who weren't in the photo.

I noticed while doing the sketch that I had created a spiral, which is a great compositional device.

Can you see the spiral in the first sketch? Well anyway I could.

So now I had everything in place, good reference, a good composition and I was ready to paint.

(NOTE: I don't always use photographs to create my paintings, sometimes it's plein air work etc. that leads to a painting. However, sometimes if you use them right a photo works just fine. Especially digital photos shown on a computer monitor which gives truer color than slides and the like.)

So I started painting. It was going good. I spent quite a bit of time capturing the lily in center of the painting and I liked how the fish were looking. I was on the path to success. But alas and alack, something was wrong. The lily which I had so carefully delineated was sticking out like a sore thumb, and the fish were overshadowed by the lily's grandstanding. So as much as it hurt, I wiped out the lily and repainted the area it was in. Now the fish were the main players just like I had originally intended and the quiet rhythmic spiral of repose was there.

Here is the finished painting, which I dedicate to one of our goldfish who is in the fish hospital, receiving medication  and I hope is on a healing path.

Three Fish

14" x 18"

Oil on Canvas