Revisions

Heading to High Country

I made some further changes to this and now feel it is at least approaching my original intention.  Sometimes a painting has to sit and brew for awhile before I can see what needs to be done. The changes were not huge, you might have difficulty seeing all of them, but they're there, and hopefully contribute to a more successful

outcome.

In particular, I darkened the foreground grasses. When I viewed the painting in grayscale, the foreground seemed to rival the sky in value, so it needed to come down a notch. 

I made the foreground snag (that's "dead tree" for you easterners) larger.

I revised the front rider and horse just a tad. Some drawing issues needed to be corrected.

I changed the one smaller dead tree above the rider to a shadowed green tree. Better emphasis with his red shirt, which also got toned down in saturation a bit, because at the distance we view him, the color would not be so rich. (remember, everything gets grayer and lighter as it recedes into distance, even short distances)

And though the glare (which I could NOT seem to avoid in photographing today) keeps us from seeing it, the trees have been refined and some brought forward, and some thrown into shadow.  They look better, even though this photo doesn't show it so much.

And finally, I "smuggled red" in there (for all you Stapleton Kearns fans, you know what that is).  Little touches of red added here and there to compliment an overall green landscape. Can you find the smuggled reds?