At times, it is tough to crop a drawing or painting if the vision was to have an image as a whole. After all, the initial scene is what prompted the piece for the artist, at least in many cases.

Sometimes, though, when a final piece just does not look “right,” it really can help to crop it. That was the case with a recent palette knife painting. The painting was done in acrylics with mainly a palette knife — a great look for something more impressionistic.

This acrylic painting was done from a photo taken at the seashore and depicts a lady and either her daughter or granddaughter standing at the edge of the sea, gazing out at its waves.

Copying the scene as closely as possible to its original became a bit of a challenge because the water stretched all the way from the sand to the top of the photo — there was no horizon or sky shown in the original photograph. So when translated into a painting, it’s a bit unclear when analyzing it whether the top area is the sky with clouds or sea foam on more waves.

(The image before it was cropped)

That, of course, was a bit of a bummer — especially because we expect to see some skyline above the ocean. Luckily, cropping the image lessens the awkward effect.

(“At the Seashore,” acrylic on canvas: final version)

So though this one didn’t turn out perfectly, cropping did make a difference so that it wasn’t a complete loss. It does look more abstract than intended — but there’s always a lesson to learn, isn’t there?