Working through, End of Summer painting by Everglades artist Jo-Ann Sanborn

End of Summer, Jo-Ann Sanborn

20x24, acrylic on canvas

Just a couple of weeks ago this Everglades painting was not working for me. I spoke about it's problems here. A few hours in the studio and the whole came together in a much better painting.

The first thing I did in my correction attack was to glaze the whole painting with a transparent Yellow Azo. The colors took on a unity they had been lacking. The yellow neutralized, or toned down the purples, exaggerated the greens and softened the sky, giving the painting a nice glow. A this point I felt there was some hope for this painting.

Without letting that dry thoroughly I painted out some of the brush clumps and merged others, giving a much better flow to the greenery, put more distance between the water and the background which helped the scale of the palms, and added the cloud reflections to the right places in the water. My final step was to soften the more distant brush line to keep it in feeling with the rest of the painting.

The changes are not huge, but make a big difference in the final product. Wolf Kahn, one of my favorite art teachers, paraphrasing, says that a painting should always show the struggle of the painter on the canvas. I find that working through problems gives a painting depth of character it doesn't have when all comes more easily.