Repainted the same corner of sky three times this week and I think the first one was right
I've got maybe 45 minutes a night to paint, so three tries at the same patch of sky is basically my whole week gone. Working on a marsh scene from a photo I took at a rest stop in Delaware last fall, and the sky there is this washed out gray-blue that's honestly kind of ugly in real life, but in the painting it just turns to mud. Tonight's version is too purple. Tuesday's was too gray. Friday's was closest and I covered it up because I decided it looked unfinished.
I keep doing this. I think it's because I only get the short window, so everything has to feel like progress, and a sky that's already right doesn't feel like progress.
Anyway I'm leaving tonight's purple disaster on the easel until Sunday so I can look at it with actual eyeballs instead of tired ones. Anyone else paint better in the first pass and then ruin it trying to be careful?
Also if you use Liquitex heavy body ultramarine, is yours weirdly glossy straight out of the tube or did I get a bad batch? Might be my medium but I don't think so.
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The one you covered up was probably the one. Washed out gray-blue is hard because it doesn't look like anything, so your eye reads it as unresolved and you keep fixing it. But the marsh is doing the work in that scene, the sky just has to sit back and not compete. Overworking it is how it turns to mud, not the color itself. Try mixing that gray-blue with a touch of the marsh's own green in it, so the two are related, and leave it alone when it looks boring. Boring is usually correct for sky.
"Leave it alone when it looks boring" is going to live in my head rent free, thank you. I think you nailed it with the unresolved thing. It doesn't look like a sky, so I keep going back in to make it look like something, and every pass adds another layer of actual mud.
Adding green is interesting and I never would have thought of that. Do you mean a tiny bit right in the mix, or more of a scumble over it once it's down? I'm nervous about turning the whole thing swamp colored.
The "leave it alone when it looks boring" thing is what gets me too. I've painted over more good skies than bad ones, I swear. Mine are always too blue, I want them dramatic and then they look like a postcard.
The green-in-the-gray trick is a good one. I do something like that with my skies and the water so they don't look like two different paintings stuck together.