Shire of Ashburton

 Shire of Ashburton (6x4")

This one turned out really well, and it was a lot of fun to paint too! I wasn't sure about how to capture the intensely red earth so I did a small test painting along with some swatches, and it really made a difference:

I think this might be my new way of working out colors. You can see it took me a few tries to hit the right shade of orange for the dry earth, and then a few more to hit the right shade for the murky water. In the final painting I decided to take the blue back a bit more so it wouldn't come out too colorful and compete with the orange.

I also tried a brown underpainting, but I wasn't too happy with the effect. It made it hard to hit really saturated, bright colors but didn't add anything great to make up for it.