"Sunflower Morning" 12" x 36" Watercolor mounted on Gallery Wrapped Canvas. Finished...Notice how I camouflaged the area where the Butterfly had been removed. The difference here between saving a painting and needing to start totally over lies in being fast with ingenuity, and the ability to camouflage. For a successful camouflage, placement within overall painting is key. Because this work is long and narrow, the placement was a natural for adding a spot of dense background into offending area. However, had it been that same size area, say, closer to the bottom, my problem would have been a great deal more complicated.
Adding another Sunflower in the spot would have been out, as it most certainly was here! Why? Well because the bruised and firmly washed paper would not have taken paint in the same way, and with the same precision of placement already applied in Sunflower blossoms. Therefore something totally different applied here was being called for... Had offending area actually been lower, I probably would have place the stone wall much lower in composition, and gone from there.
This is both the value and the pitfalls of following your muse while Painting, rather than going through all of the steps of planning, sketching, using a layout, etc. as one approaches every new piece.
