This painting was done at Villanueva State Park in New Mexico. The challenge here was to exploit the many shades of green for variety — and to avoid monotany — in the painting. I started out using a limited palette of cadmium yellow, cadmium red and ultramarine blue deep and titanium white. Later, I added touches of other shades of blue and red to my mixtures to create tones I couldn't get with the original triad of tube colors. To capture the lightness of the dirt in the foreground effectively, I relied on the use of saturated color, analogous hues and modulating of warm and cool tones while avoiding the overuse of white.
