Knowing when to stop is the biggest part of learning to paint well. It separates the men from the boys, so to speak. The signal for stopping is often very subtle. Like a whisper, the Muse quietly fades away. We are left not knowing what to do! We think, we scratch our heads, we look at the canvas ~ searching for what to do next. It couldn’t possibly be over so soon. Like a wonderful romance novel, we don’t want it to end! And so we come up with ‘one more thing’ to fix this or that. One more brush stroke to change the ending, ever so slightly. And suddenly we realize we are in there by ourselves! “Oh, my gosh! I have messed it up! Now what?” See what happened last night when I painted at the Bethel Beach Preserve in Mathews County, Virginia. This time the Creator got in the Last Word ~ and I got a nice little painting! The preserve is lovely marshland with a nice long sandy beach along the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay. I walked down the beach and set up my easel in the dunes. It was especially lovely as I had the whole place to myself! I used a little 6” x 12” canvas which I had prepared with an underpainting of Cadmium Red mixed with a bit of white. I like the warm underglow which it gives to my skies. I waited until the sun was going down to begin my painting because I wanted to capture the long shadows across the marsh and the glowing light. TO READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE GO TO> Wet Paint at www.dorothyfagan.com DOROTHY FAGAN paints plein air, writes and teaches painting and creativity. Her work can be seen at galleries in Virginia, North Carolina, Chicago and Boston. Her work has been featured on two PBS specials.