Constructive Criticism

Two days ago I thought this painting was finished but wasn't quite sure.  It helped to have a friend, who is the least arty person I know, mention that the bit above the sun needed lightening up - which then made me look at it again and realise she was right.  Also, as she is non-arty and usually impressed with anything I do, no matter how bad, for her to notice a fault meant it was glaring.
Then my son, who is arty, mentioned tonal values and unifying the painting by bringing more orange into the sky...and I knew that he was right as he has a pretty keen eye for these things himself.

So after an afternoon of working on this, I can confidently say that it is now finished.  I always find it so odd that you can work on a painting so closely but never see something that needs correcting even though it is right under your nose.  Once I spent hours drawing and painting a Greek house, only to have my tutor point out that the perspective of every single line of it was completely wrong - could I see it? Nope! But once it was mentioned, suddenly it was clear that it looked like the crazy house from a fairground.  Do any of you have this problem or is selective blindness just peculiar to me?

Almost There....

From being one of the most daunting paintings I have undertaken for a while, this has suddenly become very close to being finished.    It has been quite a challenge - I didn't realise how many colours and nuances of hues would be in this when I agreed to take it on - but it has also been enormous fun. Such a change of pace after using coloured pencils for most of the year!