My Husband Told Me to Paint Today

Having breakfast with my mom at a fabulous little cafe and then having my husband tell me to go home and paint the rest of the day makes for a pretty good day!   I finally braved painting another sailing photo of my husband.  This time it's a picture of him up on the mast.  The original photo and painting, he is riveting but I had trouble with his hands again so I converted him to holding onto a loose halyard. The more I work a painting, the less vibrance I have.  Part of this is overworking my ala prima (wet on wet) style of painting.  I love ala prima but I have to stop overworking.   But it was nice to be able to sit and paint today...

8x10

 Here is my beginning palette for this painting...

 For the portraits, I tend to feel more comfortable tracing the basic shape onto the canvas.

 This is what I had done when I decided to check my work in a photo.  I noticed that part of the sky had been missed with a layer of blue so I started to work the painting more and ended up completely changing it to below...

 I messed up his hand and then reworked several aspects of the painting.  He turned out much less vibrant. 

Here is the palette when I finished.  

"Up The Mast"- 8x10 Panel

Here it is with the other painting of him, it was one of my first oil paintings...
I think I'll do him at the wheel for a third one...