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Forgive me for taking so long to share my makeover progress. My youngest son just graduated from high school. The last several days have been busy, surreal, emotional, and exhausting!

I’ve been trying to pursue and achieve levels of personal and artistic excellence beyond the previous quality of my art. This means that I intend to craft paintings with a higher degree of professionalism and excellence than I’ve done before.

As I push myself, I notice some of my older paintings are kind of… well… not excellent.

In Part 1 of this short series, I told you that I was planning a rework, or makeover, of one of my older paintings. Although I like the composition and general feel of this large piece, it doesn’t meet my current standards of excellence. I want to show you how the makeover is progressing.

The painting was originally created with palette knives, so the paint is quite thick in some places. The first thing I needed to do was sand down the high points, so I would have a relatively smooth surface to paint on.

I used an electric sander to gently smooth out the surface. Then I wiped the entire surface with a rag soaked in mineral spirits and linseed oil.

On to the fun part: the actual act of painting! The first area I wanted to improve was the sky. The clouds in this painting were kind of dull. Though I did add dramatic swirls, they were flat, one color. Boring.

I darkened the clouds, starting from the top and worked my way in. Then I brightened the sky. I also streaked in some gorgeous reds along the horizon. Once I was happy with the tone and colors, I blended and softened the edges of the clouds, feathering the darks and lights together.

That looks much better already! I’m pretty happy so far.

Next, I took a long, in depth look at the water. It looks like the two waves, the one that is building up and the one that’s smashing into the break wall, are on two different planes. They don’t look like they’re in the same body of water. There’s a huge field of stretched water between them, and nothing to really tie them together.

In life, there can be a large stretching of water between waves, but there’s so much more to it than that. This water is churning, sloshing, moving back and forth. There’s constant movement as the water reacts to itself, creating smaller peaks and valleys of energy.

The area behind the waves was flat, not stormy. These two areas of the water don’t have any continuity. They don’t appear to depict the big lake at the same time.

To start with, I painted in small slashes and squiggles of dark, representing the large waves in the distance. Then, I built up the swelling wave so it’s taller, more dramatic. I added dark points and peaks, creating a rhythmic pattern of waves. These smaller rises and dips serve to connect the two waves in stormy, sloshing ebb and flow.

So far, I’m very happy with the progress of this painting. My next step is to carefully consider the foreground, and the way the water is interacting with the stone and concrete.

I hope that you like it so far!