Enter, My Old Toothbrush

When I was pretty sure I'd ruined the painting I posted about yesterday, I decided it couldn't hurt to try a rescue.  If you have nothing else to lose in a piece, you might as well, right?  I keep an old toothbrush in my paintbrush cup for just such a job.  Flooding the psychotic green area with water, I began to scrub and lift with paper towels.  This is on 300 pound paper, which gives me a lot more ability to scrub and lift than I would get on a lighter paper.  A 140 or 90 pound watercolor paper wouldn't accept this much punishment, but you can do some lifting.  

Close up like this, the glaring green is even worse.  An old toothbrush is a great painting tool.  It splatters, scrubs and lifts very well.

After I had gotten all of the pigment out of the paper I could, I let it dry out.  The poor painting looked relieved.  It can't be easy projecting such a lurid shade all day.  

After the scrubbed out area dried, this is what was left.  Still a lot of green to contend with, but at least now there were possibilities.

Although the hue was much less concentrated, there was still green to deal with.  A very un-southwestern shade of green, too.  However, there was hope for a rescue at this point.  

A closeup of the green after adding Burnt Sienna and Yellow Ochre glazes over the green mess.

I decided to neutralize the green a bit with Burnt Sienna.  There was no going lighter at this point and the new foreground would still be a bit dark, but it couldn't be worse than it had been.  

The first row of vegetation begins.  No green needed here, I used yellow at the top of the shapes and violet for the shaded parts.  It still reads green, but is really not.

Laying a Medium Cadmium Yellow around the edges of the of farthest edge of the vegetation shapes, I used a violet mixed with Burnt Sienna and Indigo to darken the bottoms of the shapes.  Together they made a much more believable green.  

The foremost bush shapes are ready to drop in at this point, but it's already obvious that the only way to make something this dark work is to make a darker area at the opposite edge.  Adjust, adjust, adjust..

With the foreground being such a dark value I could see the cloud areas were too light now.  It's always a series of adjustments.  If you darken one place, you have to darken another to balance it out.  

The finished piece with the dark cloud shapes at the top of the paper.  Not a masterpiece, but now a usable painting.  In retrospect, I should have composed the piece with more foreground than sky, but it was an experiment.    

All in all, a much more satisfactory outcome.  The dark values at top and bottom work better together and emphasize the shadows on the bluff shapes better.  I am happier with it and feel like I learned a ton from this painting.  What a luxury; a day in the studio to spend learning and growing.  

Thanks for stopping by! Alice