Man, I had nothing but problems with this challenge. I can't tell you how many times I wiped out, threw away and started over again. A BIG waste in paper and paint. So I decided to just ignore it and not do December's challenge.

FOCUS! Isn't that what I was speaking of in January's critique. Well I had tried to give focus. First to the Mountains; then to the Reflections; and finally to the Boat. Nothing worked.

It wasn't until I read something in Jeanne Dobie's book "Making Color Sing" about "distinctive divisions." She had you design "bold, unequal divisions, by cutting out paper shapes. (shades of Matisse). So I went back to Decembers mountains, reflections and boat study and started out just with the mountains, as they play a rather dominate role in the whole picture and found I didn't really like how they came to a point somewhere near the center of the picture. Two, I didn't really like the over-all shape of the two foreground mountains, they were too similar. So I cut out and I cut out shapes after shapes after shapes, juggled them around until I finally came up with something I found acceptable.

The immediate foreground hill, needed something on it, so I built a house. The boat of course rather than being anchored in the cove is tied to a buoy because it belongs to the owner of the cabin. The owners dinghy sits on the shoreline. I thought about putting a figure heading up to the cabin but by then I was so darn tired of this whole exercise I decided ENOUGH!

Now I have to go clean my studio. It is full of paper cut-outs. Actually, I think I will put them into an envelope. They may come in handy for future exercises.

By the way, Jeanne Dobie's book is excellent.

―Sue