Step Two of new painting

This is before Lunch on the second day... this is what I worked on. Finished the underpainting and started to build around my focal point which was the falls. I started with placing in the darks in. In the past I used to block in everything. That would then take away from the focal point; instead I learned to build around it.

I also tend to detail everything. I guess when people see you as an artist they want to see how realistic you can get it. They expect you to make them a photograph of an image. Taking away how the artist sees the painting. When an artist interprets the object they put in emotions, personality and charcter into the painting's object. Put some people in a classroom and ask them to paint a pear and that pear will be seen differently by each individual. It drives me nuts when people don't think it looks like it...and we are to say "Well...that is what you see, but I see it differently! "

Any ways, I then got the background too green with Viridian Hue. A little goes along way. So we grayed up the mountains by using a bluish gray to distance them and to get rid of the green. We also used a pink sky to give the essence of morning or mid morning.

Another thing to remind myself. Darks closest to the foreground are going to be the darkest dark and as they move away the get lighter. Another thing I am known for are hard lines and high contrast. So I'm trying to tone down the darks as the move away from the front of the picture.