Now that the foreground has been tinted, we're going to work on the dark areas. So taking some ultramarine blue and adding some Crimson to make a really a fairly deep violet, and this will provide a good deep tone for the shadow area for the bushes on the hillside rich. The great thing about using a painting knife is that you really don't need to overmix all your colors each time. Now taking the dark tone here you can see how I'm applying it with the side of the knife. And really at this early stage, we're blocking in all the shadow areas when you look into an area of trees or bushes, and you see the darkest part in the shadow area. That's what we're actually doing.

Now we're actually putting in that shadow area. Each area of the painting this block in stage will look quite flat. So don't be too concerned about it, it's really important to establish the general shapes, we're looking at the big shapes as you can see in the foreground, how that warm red has the appearance of coming forward or ready compared to the sky area. By adding this dark shadow tone, you can see already that it provides great contrast between the sky and the warm foreground that we have here. It's really important at the beginning of any landscape painting to really establish your darkest areas first, imagine if you were just to start on your sky, you don't have any contrast. You don't have any foundation or any key that will set up the painting.

So in those early stages, it's really important to get those darks in. Now we're taking some ultramarine blue and I think some cadmium yellow and a touch of white because we're now going to Start working on some other values, some green values just underneath that line of brushes. Again, a fairly deep tone, but not too green at this stage, because we're just putting down a general color. Again, this is this is really what we call an under painting. And the under painting provides a really good solid foundation to enable you to really start working lighter colors and values as your painting develops. I'm adding a touch of crimson as you can see to the green and that just reduces the strength and also gives a slightly deeper tone.

Now the great thing as you can see with the knife as you spread the color on, you don't have to over mix it because the colors do start to mix slightly as you spread them on the canvas, and it's good just to leave areas of streaks you don't really want to over mix it and this is what gives the painting its character when you're using Using a painting knife, I'm adding some titanium white to the green, a touch of crimson to first of all lighten the color that I have here. Also with the touch of ultramarine blue, and as you can see, it's making more of a neutral color. Now especially adding a touch more of the blue. This is going to go along the ridge on the hillside just to give a little bit more of an alternative neutral color and a bit more distance just in that particular area.

Again, as you can see, you don't over mix it you put it down and let some of that underpainting already there show through. I'm now adding some cadmium yellow, and a touch of ultramarine blue to bring back a deeper green. Not a strong green but a more of a muted green to continue in this mid ground area.