Maine Flowers & View

Coming back to this painting today, it jumped out at me that the cobalt blue that I'd used on the ceramic pitcher holding the flowers was way too powerful.  It wasn't in the original palette I used when I started the painting (the cerulean in the sky wasn't either... but it made sense to me).  I grayed it down so it could sit under and behind the flowers.  I also made the arrangement less static -- flowers now spill down in the front, not just the sides of the pitcher.

Shadows were missing from the table the flowers were on. I added small houses to the distant view (it's the town of Bass Harbor, Maine across the water; the porch is in Bernard).

Compared to the immediacy of painting outside, it's a different feeling to sit in the studio and think through questions about how the painting is seen, whether the light is consistent, whether things seem appropriately close or far.  It's my hope that I don't have to view this as a trade-off with either paintings that convey a moment in time or paintings that appear to be overly studied.