A new painting after being inspired at the Gregg Manchess Workshop

Scene From The Fisherman's Wife    oil on canvas 14" x 24 "

I attended the Gregg Manchess Workshop  "Plan Great Images From The Ground Up" in Bothell Washington Nov 8-10.
I learned quite a lot about composition and design and I hope my images now will be much stronger if I keep applying what I learned from this fantastic three day workshop.
 Gregg Manchess is a fantastic artist and I have been a big fan of his work for many years. Check out the link I provided to his web site if your not familiar with his work.
After pounding my brain with his info about clumping, cropping, overlapping, point of view and more and sketching thumbnails till my fingers turned raw, I think Im seeing the light at least a little bit !
I have always been in such a hurry to get started with the painting, but I learned its better to delay that in order to figure out the most dramatic design to keep the viewers eyeballs clamped to the canvas.

Heres some process images:

Above are some of the thumbnails I  generated for this fairytale idea in the workshop. I did probably 30 to 40 more, most of them pretty uninteresting but I learned a lot from Gregg's critiques and lectures.

Above are the best thumbnails fleshed out a bit more , the four at the bottom I elaborated on after I got back home. Using the principals I learned in the class I shifted my camera view slightly to the right and I think it made a more interesting picture.

Heres my charcoal comprehensive after I shot my reference. I followed Gregg's example and photographed myself as the Fisherman , and I found a little octopus toy and lots of octopus photos that I hope makes the octopus somewhat convincing. I went to the beach as well so I could see the water interacting with rocks which were my octopus stand ins.