Toronto Skyline Reflected

 

24 x 24 oil on canvas

Often if a painting won't photograph well, its because there is something wrong with the painting. With this one, I knew I had the colour temperature and values wrong. Richard Schmid says in his book Alla Prima that if a colour looks like "mud', its not the colour that is muddy, it is the wrong temperature against the other colours on the painting. I struggled with this picture, first  tightening up too much (all those twinkly lights don't show the same intensity from far away). And I had the values and temperature wrong. (Not much right going on) I finally changed my photo reference to black and white and painted from that. I find it helps to do this in order to get a fresh look at values.

I also find that if I take a painting too seriously, and want it to look a certain way rather than letting it find its way as I paint, I will find ways to be unsuccessful.

I'm still not sure about this one...I go between sort of liking it and wanting to repaint it.
Thanks to John Tavares for the photo reference.