Fixing A Broken Painting

As a oil painter there are always problems you have to over come to make a good painting. Sometimes you either rushed things a bit or your materials weren't perfect or your knowledge just wasn't there yet. The after sight is what I was dealing with recently.

I usually don't go back a rework paintings very often, but I did on this one. 

The Salt Creek painting as it sat on a wall

And here's why I did

There was a lot of things that I liked about this painting when I finished it the first time. 

It was a bigger painting than I usually do.

I liked the composition, the light coming thru the tree, the water effects and the over all colors used was interesting in the painting. 

But what I later decided I didn't like and bothered the dickens out of me was the main tree and the grasses around it.  What was I thinking? And the foreground wasn't as interesting as I would like it to be, and the clouds need help also.

The tree area I would be targeting first a long with color changes

So I made up my mind to go back in and make some changes-

First I would start with the tree! If this painting was going to be any good that tree had to be interesting. So I took a photo of it and took it into Photoshop and played around with it and came up with a plan.

A Plan is the MOST important piece of re-working a painting! If you don't know what to fix you are playing not painting.

The Photoshopped in a tree that I felt would be more impactful to the scene.
 An older tree with a little more tilt to it.

This where I when to work and here is what it turned into.

"Salt Creek" By James Swanson
24 x 30 Oil

The purple mass of trees behind the main tree was something of a surprise, I didn't expect it to work out so well as it did. It added a whole new feel that I went with by bringing in that color into other places in the painting to move the eye around.

Now Salt Creek is ready to go back on the wall, this time with a fresh and stronger look.