I made painting a priority in recent days and got back to an older one that I hadn’t finished (code word for “mostly given up on”) and tried to advance it forward without ruining it (always a risk).
Here’s how it looks now:
And this is where it started (you can see my comments on the older version in this post, Trying to Get Loose):
I used a lot of white paint to allow a re-start on the bandana, which I was very reluctant to do because I liked the blue with splashes of color set against the light-colored (no-color) hair. Part of me wishes I had left the hair blank of color and left the bandana as it was.
I also used white to cut back the boldness of the purple splotch in front of his face, and of course there are the layers of color now on his face, and the black pen scratching for his hair and ear.
All artwork is vulnerable to being over-worked, and this is especially true in water color, where the paper starts to break down after too many passes, or perhaps the beautiful layering that is possible with water color starts to get covered up in a muddy mess.
The only solution is to paint hundreds, and thousands, of paintings, and so we press on..
FocusedPleasure 