A lot of time was spent getting to this point and I was running out of time.  I wanted the foliage to complement the rocks and sand so I brought in a lot of purples and blues as a underpainting to the detail of the plants that were to follow.

At this point I had to start getting serious about the all of the palm trees and just putting sections of the painting to bed.  It is critical to the composition to keep the trees in the proper relationship to the hills that they are coming from.

 

I have really been going through the pastels at a much higher rate because of the number of large paintings I have been completing.  To supplement the pallet that I currently have been using I added the plein air set of Diane Townsend pastels that were the first set I ever bought on line.  It was interesting using them on the surface because they have pumice in them as does the board I use.