Reworking a Piece from High School (18 years ago!)

Most of us prefer to hide away art from our younger years.  I'm right there with you with some cringe-worthy pieces created from a class assignment that I'm not sure I even cared much for.  Other times, I tried really hard and didn't quite make it there.  

The later might be worth revisiting as our skills increase.  There was something that drew us, inspired us about that work and, if it still pulls at us, then why not give it another go?

Mountains at Dawn was one of those pieces for me.  I remember the class assignment required oil pastels and a landscape - two things that we certainly not in my comfort zone.  Oil pastels still aren't, if I'm being completely honest with myself.

But the color palette I used on the misty mountains was something that I couldn't toss out.  I saved that piece, although it was definitely pushed aside.  

There are so many places where the tan paper shows through that you would think I had been working with wax crayons.  Shading and highlighting is drastic and harsh and not in that creative, contemporary art way.  The colors are muddy in a few areas.  My personal favorite are the ghosts climbing the side of the purple mountains.  Mist doesn't behave like that?  Why would high school me think mist behaves like that?

When taking on a reworking project, it's incredibly helpful to have what you like and what you want to change written out, almost like those pro/con lists folks do for decision-making.  While it seems silly, taking the time for this step gave me clear goals and notes for where I needed to improve my skills.

As far as the skill improvement, I did what many of us do nowadays and hit YouTube hard.  I watched many tutorials on blending, layering colors, and edging.  I got to work and kept going back to generous wealth of information that more experienced artists had put out each time I got frustrated.

In this picture, you can see partway through the rework.  I used a blending stump and sometimes my fingers to get better pastel coverage.  Using shades slightly off from the main color to layer helped the appearance of grass and the mist.  The ghost duck is still there though.

Layers, layers, and more layers.  One thing I did quite differently from the original image was to add more highlights to more objects.  Since the coloring is a bit surreal, these extra marks make it clear which direction the sunlight is coming from and how directly its striking different objects.  The sky is still quite rough and the shadowed mountains need attention.

But after significantly more hours than I intended to spend (isn't that how most of these things go?), I was happy with the end result.  The ghost has crossed over, too.

Have any of you undertaken projects like this?