The Fried Egg Painting

by Janet Bonneau in Thoughts on Oil Painting
     
Overworking a painting can ruin it. So I decided to Google ‘how to ruin a painting’ to confirm my theory.
 
On About.com/Painting I found an interesting article by Marion Boddy-Evans. I like what she writes.
 
Her 5 top ways to ruin a painting include:
1. overworking a painting (extremely guilty)
2. lack of tonal difference (guilty)
3. too many colors (pretty guilty)
4. only one reference photo, copied slavishly (not very guilty)
 
AND…
 
 
5.  The Fried Egg Composition 
 
I know I have at least two of those in my painting stash, done a few years ago before I realized eggs were for eating, not part of the landscape. It was a beautiful winter scene in early morning. I went outside and apparently painted what I thought I saw – a fried egg against a dark blue sky. 
 
 
 
 
The next time I did a fried egg composition, I painted several eggs in the sky.
I saw the scene as very bright sunlight shining through the trees – kind of like these eggs framed against the kale here.
 
 
 
I don’t paint the fried eggs into my compositions anymore and I won’t be going back into those paintings to rework them either. Why ruin a good thing.
 
 
To read the full article by Marion Boddy-Evans visit: 
 
 
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