Here is the same picture:
One has the midtones-the colors that we first see.
The second picture has the darks and lights that we also see. Which one do you like?

Here is a high country cabin in Colorado. Summer colors are saturated so painters remember that you can use the paint straight from the tube. Keep you whites out of the paint! Add white to sky colors only. Richness is great and one cannot be too rich! Let the color describe a mood.

Howe Farm in the spring and summer. This is painted with a high center of interest thus making the field very important but is it distracting from the farm buildings?
It would only be so, if there are too many darks in the field. Keep your darkest darks and lightest lights in either the foreground, middle ground or background when composing a landscape.
What painter put the darks in the background of a landscape??
Maynard Dixon, one of America's greatest painters!

Here are the Green Mountains that I love to paint. The abundance of flowers is what I feel and smell and sense-I paint more that I can see!
Students ask me if I "make it all up"?
Its a valid question. is there an answer to creativity, or a basis, or even a reason?
I respond that I teach techniques and how to apply paint, but they create. There is no one definitive book about good design and I doubt there will be one on creativity! Feast with your heart!

Here is one of my first mountain and lake scenes. I don't know how many I painted of different mountains and lakes before it dawned on me that this is what I love to do!
Following your passion is not just becoming a painter but also what kind of painter. Through your own discoveries we create culture: you paint your passion and I paint mine.
Being focused will help inspire your next painting. Just because I can do something doesn't mean I am passionate about it. A good story or painting will have that passion and not just a good line.

I was unable to add text to my last posting, therefore I am noting here that everyone can join my Kickstarter Project-Wilderness Landscapes. Buy a painting at cost, and we can all celebrate wilderness. I want to let you know through this Blog how many ways artists have to sell art, give art to patrons and celebrate culture. This en plein air painting shows what you will find in my Landscape Project! Have fun and start a project of your own!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1160498564/wilderness-landscapes-oil-paintings-for-wilderness