"Arroyo Hondo Morning" (cont'd)

Lastly, for this stage of the painting, I put in the lightest areas, such as the newly leafed springtime trees, the horizonal slope at the top of the bluff with its distant trees, the light-reflecting water, and the sky. Once these are correctly related -- I've spent the most time on this aspect of the painting -- all I have to do is correct anything that's not quite right.

As you can see, my palette is a mess. The only color I premixed was the first shadow color of the bluff. (It's still on the palette knife.) From that all-important starting point, I mixed each of the shadow colors, usually with some of the original color in it. You can also see the dark greens and blues of the shadow areas of the lefthand tree. When I was ready to do the lighted areas, by mixing next to a previous color, I could better judge the temperature and value of the new color. A good example are the yellow-greens on the upper right edge of the mixing pile.

For some of the lightest tones, I plopped some white in the middle of a pile of the darks in order to mix near the light tones just to the left. Then I adjusted the white with the yellows I added in the middle of the pile. Most importantly, I had enough paint there that I could mix and load the brush with plenty of color. Remember, load that brush!

By now, I'm elaborating on the shoreline, trees, and the pattern of cracks and highlights on the bluff.

And I'm correcting and adding detail to the bridge and detail to both the light and shadow areas of the bluff.

I kept the painting around the studio and made some changes. I added a dark area to the water, lightened the shadow side of the foreground rocks and gave more depth to the yellow trees. I'm pleased with the end result, but the photo was in warmer light. Will correct ASAP.