Wow! Rocks are done.

This is a good example that if I'm really into it I can accomplish a lot in a short time period. After the last update, I had a dinner then spent another hour working on the mid ground rocks. I completely ignored the detail and focused on bigger shapes and shadow/highlight. Then put greens to surround them. I still need to knock down some foreign colors that I previously painted but otherwise this part is done. Next would be foreground ground colors.

Refining colors of cows and shadow values of rocks

Now I'm trying to finish this piece as well. But I still need to work a lot more about middle ground rocks and greens. I probably need to simplify the rocks much more. Cows are getting closer to the final.

Painting at Rosario Beach

I knew Sat was the only chance to go out and paint over the holiday weekend, which I did. I went up to Deception Pass and set up my easel at Rosario Beach. This is the view of sea and Olympic Mountains further away. I wanted to get the values right then lost sense of colors. Typical failure. Also I couldn't paint strata of rocks well. I probably should have shifted value&color carefully and made the edge sharper.

I'll try remembering these next time.

This is not how I wanted to finish this...

Well, I couldn't find a way to improve this any further. Anything I do so far doesn't turn out what I intended. Either color-wise or texture-wise. I would give this up and put the final touches on then call it "done".
This is disappointment but the reality of my skills. I need to move on for now. I hope I would be able to look back and say "Aha! I couldn't have done that way." after learning/developing my way of painting landscape like this in the near future.

Filling Background

Spent some days to fill background to be closer to the final values&colors. After the effort I probably won't have to touch the area until the end. Pretty much done.

Then started refilling the rocky middleground. I should have done this at the beginning because I think that's one of reasons I couldn't build up context around the cubs. I'll push values in the area a little more to darker and lighter before coming back to the main subject. Now I can see much more how the final painting would look like.

A little progress after a while

3 weeks no update. That's not good. Many excuses but none of them is a good one. Focused on foreground colors and highlighted part of the main trees. It's still lacking contrast. I need to put darker values much darker especially those main trees. Tried putting spokes of a wheel of irrigation pipe. They're standing out too much. I need to push them back too.