A one day study / Palm Fine Arts class preparation

I just cannot believe my last post dates back to January ( this year...). I knew I had been busy these last few months but I did not notice so much time flew by.
Anyway, I am happy to be back online , I have a few things to show, here is the first one:

I have a mural class scheduled this summer at Palm Fine Arts.
When I teach this type of course I usually do a full size study of the subject chosen before teaching it.
In order to make sure the content is not too "heavy" I make sure it will not take me more than a day to paint.
My friends Lotta and Mats, owners and teacher at PFA, asked me to propose a landscape with a little bit of a swedish "taste". I made a mix based on a Chichkine ( marvelous russian painter!) landscape and a little background of "my own" and stopped after almost 12 hours , here is the result ( painted with Golden Proceed) :

 1- Drawing and washes in Raw Sienna and Raw Umber.

2- The washes are finished at that stage ; the values of the different areas start to appear.

3- Green tones are applied over the sepia tones ; all is quite transparent. 

4- At this stage I "push" all the dark tones and prepare my background for the "Lights" stage.

4a - detail of the central part.

4b. Dark tones are also applied on the tree trunks. The sky is almost finished ( opaque light blues painted through the foliage).

4c. Detail of the central part.

5. Light greens ( quite opaque) are applied.

5a . At this stage I also block in the flowers on the very foreground.

Stage 5a and final touches on the flowers.

6. Finished panel. I guess that we will add some "living" element in the foreground. There is a bird on Chichkine's model ...I would like to paint a fox in the flowers, at mid-distance.

The whole process is of course much more complex than these short explanations but these are really the steps we will go through when painting this landscape. The focus will be put on the values , on the correct use of paint consistency ( opaque vs. transparent) and on the brushwork. Colors are also key to such subject but the technique ( sepia underground) and the palette we will use will prevent us from getting too green.

Landscape are very interesting to study, quite difficult ( many painters paint good figures but weaker landscape ...one could think that the contrary was true) but with the help of a few technical keys one can really improve.