Rider of the Purple Sage -Work in Progress 5

I've been documenting my last few paintings by photographing them step by step as I paint and the process has allowed me to discover some things about my painting process. It seems I focus on defects the entire way through a painting, spotting them and then trying to fix them. So I am looking at the bad parts pretty much continuously, I think this is why it is such a battle of self doubt, sometimes even after the work is done it may take a year before I finally like it. So to help battle this I am going to try to also focus on the things I really like in a painting. By focusing more on the positive I can make more areas like that instead of constantly putting out fires.  

Here are some close ups of the areas I really like in this painting. 

I'm going for an impressionistic style in this painting and in these areas I think I have been pretty successful. Some of the background and sky I'm not as happy with at this point. So now I will transfer the foreground technique to the sky as well. I always want to add a lot more detail but on this painting I want to back off from that more photographic look. We'll see how that goes.Water based oils should be here next week so I'm just looking at the painting and doing my own critique for now.

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