Guizikeng 鬼子看 is a park not far from our house. We can get there in about half an hour on foot, if we hustle. Our usual hiking route actually crosses in front of this promontory, a good distance away from it, and then charges up switchback after switchback to top out on a ridge that's high enough to look down on this exposed cliff. It's a beautiful area, wonderfully rugged. You can quickly leave civilization behind and find yourself deep in the woods. It would take hours if they had not laid out hundreds and hundreds of stone steps for us.
For a look at the hike, check out our earlier post: http://letsgotakealook.blogspot.tw/2011/10/this-is-our-backyard.html
To compare this painting to my original oil pastel of the same scene, read on.
Here is a view of the 8x10" oil pastel of this same image shortly after we made that first hike.
One of the things I appreciate about painting from the same reference twice is that while the place may still be recognizable, what I see and the decisions I make will be different each time I paint the scene. I will also react to the serendipitous things that happen either because of the medium I'm using or because of some random goof-up I may have done. Sometimes those end up being my favorite parts of the painting--and you can never repeat them.
This is life, though, isn't it? Even if we come across the same challenge months later, we will have learned new things and we'll make different choices with the the new tools. The outcome is never exactly the same.
That's the beauty of it.
What have you revisited that has come out differently the second (third, fourth, fifth) time?
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