working on details - and it's done!

The camera seems to accentuate the yellow in the poppies.  They look better on the canvas.  I have worked on the hills quite a bit, and now I think they are much better linked to the middle ground as well as being less flat.

And now, as much as anything ever is, it is finished.  I have simply run out of time to do more.  But the five hours today has made all the difference to it in my own eyes.  I will use a varnish that I can paint over, and only one layer of varnish, because I think that I will work on it some more after the exhibition.

For Kris and Celeste:  I deepened the reds of the poppies, lightened the ones on the right where the sun might be shining through them, worked on the greenery in the foreground, deepened the shading of the mountains in the background then glazed them again, warmed up the closest hills, and glazed the middle ground with a very light ivory tint (the view out the window was hazy today...).  So the difference in the two photos is pretty much an indication of the changes I made today.

I lost track of the hours, but this one was certainly a lot more than the other ones, and they took me long enough!