"Paint what you know".

84 F  sunny

This is a favorite spot, and area, but the view is different, still it contained road foreground, fields, middle ground and hills background, a favorite general arrangement.   I had in my head "paint what you know" when I set out so I did.

Need I say more?  I'm looking south-west,  It's noon, really bright, but I'm getting some darks out of the shadows, especially the pines. The cows weren't there when I started.

This is my start, I wanted to establish the mid-range hills to be the darkest, the mid-range fields, to be 2nd, the far hills, 3rd, the road, 4th and the sky the lightest.  I got this, basically, but the mid-range hills had some light areas, the far hills ended up too dark, and the road too light.

I hadn't put the large pine in yet, I did later, putting it to the right of where it was, I just thought it made a better picture, not blocking the smaller if the two far hills.

The painting is not done, but I was really happy with the way my pallet worked today, I got the initial dark-of-darks, mixed right, and that made all the difference!  I use this to mix MOST, not all colors down, so it gets into everything.  I also realized that the road needs some thought, I did mix two colors, both the same (or pretty close) in value, but one bluish, and the other orangeish.

  OK here is Eagleville, with the tree removed, I also changed the rocks in the foreground, and fine-tuned around the shore-line in the middle distance. I'm still not happy with the color but I think It came out better than I might have.  The softness of  the mid-ground woods is kinda what I wanted, but the water slipped through my fingers, (sorry I couldn't help myself)