How to paint a landscape:

Below is a quick pencil sketch of my intended painting- showing lights and darks, shapes, and the overall composition. It’s pretty rough, but the painting is fixed in my head already completed, so I really don’t need to spend a lot of time on this step. From there, I lightly sketch the composition out on the blank prepared canvas using a watercolor pencil- usually some sort of violet. I find it doesn’t muddy up the colors I’m using to use either a blue violet or red violet pencil depending on the color of shadows I intend to use. The sketch is very faint, and the watercolor pencil blends with the acrylic paint as I layer on color, eventually disappearing under the layers of paint.

Above is the painting with light washes of color, shadow and shapes indicating the elements I will be working on in greater detail in the coming days.
Shadow areas indicated, the beginnings of grasses and vegetation, rocks, the flowing stream, foreground trees and grasses.
This is as far as I intended to go today, and already it is beginning to look like my Colorado memories. I’ll let it dry over night, and hopefully will have some studio time tomorrow afternoon to work on it again. I’ll photograph as I go along and post again.
I’d love to hear what you think so far, get some input on if you like watching the process or not, and any comments you’d like to make.