This was my painting for the day (the one on top). I tried this same subject a couple years ago. It turned out rather disappointing (the one on the bottom). This one I'm happy with. It's what I love about painting. To find the shapes and colors and arrangement that create a song across the canvas, regardless the subject. Why does this one work better? Better color. The relationship/contrast between the cool shadow planes and the warm light, especially that one yellow building. The warms and cools on the face of the granary in the middle. Better resolution of forms and shapes. Cropping in closer made the negative shapes more interesting. I like the repetition of angles across the picture. That gets a little lost in the older one. There is a good rhythm across the canvas on top that doesn't happen on the bottom one. The accents/beats of the darks: the tree, the dark shape in the granary, the palm tree and the tracks along the bottom, with the smaller beats of the tall and short posts. That said, looking at the older one now after a couple years, I like it better than I thought. I like seeing the whole granary up to the top, the way the link fence is articulated and the perspective of the fence and building at right. But I still like the new one better. What do you think?
Miracles seem to me to rest not so much upon healing power coming suddenly near us from afar but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that, for a moment, our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there around us always. – Willa Cather
That's one reason I paint. It opens me up to those finer moments.
I've been enjoying doing these small landscapes out in the desert a few miles from my house.
