Final Attempt?

Wednesday Evening

Clearly, I haven't been hard at work at clearing out the basement, but I have been focused on the lake painting.  This morning after David left to go see his dad, I poked and prodded various things, delayed some more by doing the normal morning chores, read a chapter or four . . . you know.  I was circling the Big Project waiting to get my courage up enough to pounce.

Finally, I did it.  After all I said about what my teacher, Sharon, recommended, I didn't follow her advice after all.  Here's what she thought would be the best bet.  By the end of the class yesterday, we both thought I wouldn't be able to get the top half right for a variety of reasons.  We also thought the rainbow shouldn't extend all the way up to the top of the painting as it does in the photograph.  Again, one doesn't have to take every detail exactly as it was; there is always room for artistic licence.  And I take it with both hands.  Sharon's advice was to paint out the top half and add more clouds.  Now that is a very good option, and I may still have to take it.  If you look at photos (and I did - many), you'll notice that rainbows frequently disappear into clouds and don't come out the other side.  One issue I had with that though was that most often that occurs when the rainbow appears during the rain when the clouds and sky are quite gray.  I didn't want to change the painting that much as that would require - well, repainting the entire thing.

What I decided to do was to give my original technique (the one I learned by watching a YouTube video) another go, but to take some of Sharon's advice and let the rainbow disappear into the ether.  This is the way it looks now:

Rainbow Over the Gap

I've sent this version via e-mail to Sharon and my painter friends with a request for thoughts and critique (I won't tell you my concerns, yet). Tomorrow is David's birthday, and I'd really like this to be finished. Oh, I'll give it to him, of course, but it would be nice if I didn't have to snatch it back to continue working on it.

What do you think?