Resurrection of a W.I.P

I've been doing a little Spring cleaning lately and came across a few unfinished canvases tucked away. Why I never finished them, I don't know (I look back at my former self a little jealously now when I think of all of the time I had to paint!) But at least a couple of these lost souls seem worth the attempt. Except for some paint and a little more time, what have I got to lose? I decided to work on this painting of the Tuscan hillside first, since the whole canvas  was pretty far along and just needed to be fleshed out a little more.

 

Looking back through my blog archives, I actually posted this as a W.I.P. back in October of '09 (!) According to this post, I was suffering from shoulder tendonitis at the time. I guess between that and whatever else I had going on at the time, this canvas fell out of sight, and subsequently out of mind...until now.

When I first worked on this painting, I used an alkyd medium to speed the drying. So I've started in again by using some of the medium to "oil out" the areas that I want to work on. I've altered the composition slightly by elongating the shadows (it's a dusk scene) and also by simplifying the road in the foreground. It seemed to be moving too fast around the bend and leading me right out of the canvas, so I altered that area slightly by extending the shrubs to slow this movement down. I'm also toning down the yellow in the hillside because the foreground shrubs are meant to be yellow broom, and I want a different color behind them to contrast. As a result,  I'm laying in a lot more of that terra cotta earth so prevalent in this region. We will see how this goes...  A lot more work needs to be done to the hillside, the olive trees, and their shadows, and I may need to add some of the greens back. But for the moment I'm liking the predominately warm tones. I'm working more on this painting this afternoon, so  if all goes well, I hope to post a conclusion by  Friday.