I suppose it had to happen sometime – the Extinction series finally crashes into the Wave series – This is a layered acrylic/oil on canvas. It began life as the now extinct ‘Extinction 08 #5’

which was a painting that never quite got to where I wanted it – canvases that wait around in my studio for too long have a habit of getting painted over, but as there were some passages of Ex5 that I liked, I decided to keep some of it, turned it upside down and broke a wave over it to see what would happen. (the blue whale skeleton of the original now forms part of the breaking surf)

This is at the point of ‘almost finished, I think!’ it needs some final, thin glazing in places and it will need a gloss varnish as the surface has become very matt and loses the finer detail.

I painted the surf break in very broad slashes of paint with no modelling or fine detail, which has given it a calligraphic look – My question is (apart from ‘what do you think of it?) should I leave these white streaks as they are or ‘soften’ them into the painting?
Also there is a fairly heavy impasto layer of streaks under the paint layers which show through at the top right corner – I can’t decide whether to leave it showing or paint over I like the way that it indicates another hidden layer but am not sure that it works with the rest of the painting (?) (it looks like a piece of dark lined grid showing through the white)

The finished work (the original) will be put up for sale on Sam Durkin’s excellent online gallery site artsfine

oh my god your writings are brilliant !! i love the way you think !! and may i just say i done that a thousand times

I saw the fossil remains of the whale the first moment i arrive ~ it’s very abstract and straight but speaks volumes

p.s. i think you should leave it -_^
definitely

Thank you Genevieve, Karon and Sophie for your comments -

I decided to leave it pretty much as it is – just made a few very slight changes – I have put a slight shadow line in under the calligraphic marks to lift them and reworked the top right corner.

The high gloss finish really brings out the colours and shows the impasto lines really well

Detail

It looks great, I like that you decided to leave to lines of the whale and have softened the effect of the impasto in the corner. I liked the impasto though with it appearing softer it keeps your focus on all of the painting rather than the corner.
Bravo, I wish I could see it in real life!! the textured layers look superb!

Thanks for the feedback guys-
No games M, ‘value’ is something that I work hard on keeping out of the studio (God knows there is enough of that on the outside!)
This is not the first painting that has hung around too long and been dragged back to the easel for re-working. It is a purely gut-instinct thing – I just could not quite feel happy with it the first time so instead of treating it as a finished work, it becomes just a stage in a new work – in a very real sense the old work is still there, it just exists beneath another veil.
If I had known you were saving up for it I would have kept it for you! (next time….)