Painting different versions of the same scene

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This 5x7 inch oil on canvas was done entirely with a pallet knife, but is the second attempt of the same scene; "Amboy Friends Church west tower." As my last entry indicated, snow is particularly challenging for me as an artist that likes color.

Often artists will do one two or more paintings of the same scene or subject. Most people are not even aware that the artist has "redone" the same subject because the pictures are not shown together like they are here in this blog. Because they are together here, and because some painters will put different versions in a single show or exhibit, the viewer gets to compare. By nature, anytime we compare two things, we tend to pick what we like the best.

But as an artist, when I do more than one picture of the same thing, it is not to "try and do better" but to try different things. In this "same subject" painting, I attempted to use only a pallet knife rather than a palette knife and brush as in the first. I also tried to play with the color more than in the first. If you compare the tree on the left in this, and the tree on the left in the previous painting, they are vary different. In the first, the brush gave me less control than the pallet knife when making the branches.

In other "same as" subjects; I have tried to do something different with color, shadow or even point of view. Because the subject has been painted once, often this frees me to concentrate on other aspects of the painting than I could when I first painted it. Because I'm familiar with the drawing, that challenge is gone as is the composition element and that is liberating – thus allowing the artist to experiment more with different elements of the art. So, for me it is never a matter of "can I do a better job" than I did on the first.