Changing a Part of a Painting

In this video, I'm showing you how I made a pretty dramatic change to a work in process. This upper part, despite the hours I spent on it, was not working. So I'm going to mix an off-white that is a little bit lighter than than this very creamy light yellow and paint over it. Now there was a fair amount of texture here because there were various layers of collage and I first poured on a coat of pouring medium and that kind of levels it out some. I let it dry overnight and I can show you a little clip of that from a different video. This GAK 800 is the pouring medium from Golden. You just pour it directly on the piece and spread it out with a spatula. Let it dry overnight and it makes a nice smooth and level surface. So how do you know when something's not working? Well, for this piece, I kept trying to make this part work. I was really attached to it but I know it's not right because it's not just like singing to me. It's saying, just let a little time go by and then it's a little easier to forget how much time you spent on trying to make it work. So that's what I'm doing here. Now I think this upper part may not be working either but I'm going to mix this bit first and then reassess and I have to be willing to just paint over that too. I got to be willing to paint over anything if it's not working or else I'll just end up with a lot of bad or unfinished pieces which I've done that plenty. Okay, now it was these red circles that were bugging me so how am I going to address them here and here? Well, first I am going to mix an off-white just slightly darker so that it is a little more similar to this. I'm adding the yellow I'm using is Hansa Yellow Medium adding that to a white and now I'm using a little bit of Azo Gold to darken it and give it this slightly browner quality but there's a lot of ways to mix this kind of warm off-white. So is that about the same color? Dog hair everywhere. Okay, yeah I don't know if that's quite as dark. I mean the paint dries a little darker than it is when it's wet so sometimes it's hard to tell before it dries if it's going to be the right value but that's probably enough to show me what this piece looks like without the red circle over here and then the red circles here here oh yes I'm gonna have to mix all those colors again. I think I can use collage for this because I probably still have some paper that's approximately that color. Okay, I have this paper it's approximately that it's approximately the same color it's a little bit lighter and that's enough. It doesn't have to be exact to read as the same. I'm gonna let this paint dry before I attach that and then you might see just the that little transition between this color and that color and I actually like those little bits where it looks like it's been kind of patched together so I'm gonna go with that using that medium here this paper it's not I think that's too far from this color so I'm gonna go ahead and mix I'm gonna mix that color and just guessing by the color it's a very cool blue I'm guessing it's and of course it's gradated a little it's a little darker here a little lighter there this is on the lighter side I'm gonna add a little bit of phthalo blue red shade why am I doing that uh to warm it up just slightly it's it's a little shy of the complete coldness as I see it of ultramarine I'm switching hands back and forth a little bit you can do that too you don't have to be ambidextrous I'm not really ambidextrous in a small range of sort of dexterity I can use both hands and it's really useful for this kind of thing so if you don't do that give it a try for the ochre I am going to use yellow ochre I'm going to add a little white to make it more opaque I might use a little of the azogold and the yellow so I'm covering up things pretty drastically here but I don't feel like I made a mistake and I'm fixing it I just don't I do this a lot I mean not in every single painting but for me this is just part of the process you kind of commit to the marks I kind of commit to the marks I'm making and then if they ultimately don't work they ultimately don't work and can do something different for me that works better than trying to plan out the painting and make it work the first time I'm just incapable of it I think I know some people work that way really successfully okay and now let's see this off white is dry enough to add another coat so now after I after I do this I'm just going to hang it back up and look at it from a distance what might end up being more productive is leaving it overnight out of my sight and then come in and look at it in the morning so here's what it looked like after that video and then I made a few more adjustments