God damned Nature is so freaking COMPLICATED!

My original rendering of this scene was much more complicated than what eventually wound up on the canvas. All the values (lights and darks) were the same. There was a big muddy-looking bush behind the trees. I had experimented with hues in the grasses. None of it was working. So, in the studio, I took out the bushes, darkened the tree, lightened the grasses and the sky, and VOILA! A better painting emerged. Mystical experience messing around with pigments. Fun way to spend one's life, indeed. And, it really is not necessary to paint in every little detail, every leaf or blade of grass. The eye will fill in those details from memory. It is much more illuminating as an artist to just try to get that illusion on the canvas. Funnily enough, I think it is beginning to look like I know what I am doing. Believe me, it's really just an illusion, too. The trick seems to be not to give up, to just perservere, be willing to keep trying new and different methods. Sorry about that glare in the middle. Impossible to photograph a work while it is still wet without it. Maybe it adds something? One never knows, you know.