Making Changes to Old Paintings

The longer I'm stuck in the house staring at the same old paintings, the more I find myself in the mood to change them. Here are some of the recent changelings.

This top one is between 10 and 17 years old and used to have all purple flowers. A few years back I made 2 of the large ones white. This time I felt it was time to reintroduce some bright colors to it.

I just wasn't happy with that third big lily so I had to make one more change before considering it finished.

Three of the other paintings displayed in my living room with this painting had stargazer lilies in them so I couldn't resist putting one into this one too. 

This rose painting is from the 1980's and I was never really happy with it. the stems were to thick and the leaves and flowers were never quite right anyway.

So far I've blended out the roses and I'm looking through my garden photos trying to decide what I want to paint over it next. I don't plan to change the background because it matches the narrow band on the frame so well. this was one of the last expensive custom frames i ever bought so I want to preserve it.

I had also been going through some of my old drawings and decided to cut out a few to save time on this painting.

Instead of doing a new sketch, I attached my old drawings with modge podge ( I was out of acrylic gloss medium which I usually use for things like this)

Once they were firmly attached I painted over them with a coat of modge podge and let that dry before applying paint.

Next I free handed in some leaves and stems to pull them together and began to paint the flowers.

 I felt that I had added too many leaves and stems so I painted them out and tried again the next day.

I like the lighter treatment that I gave it here.

It took a number of layers before the ink lines disappeared.

 I'm still not satisfied with the petals on the flowers but have re- hung the painting to look it over and decide how to approach it before I attempt any more changes.

I just can't seem to make the petals look like the layers of petals stand out from each other and get the shading and shadows quite right but that's a puzzle for another day.