Five O'clock Shadows, pastel, 9 x 12

I'm having my pastel classes paint southwestern desert landscapes for the next couple of weeks.  Since I've visited that part of the country only a handful of times, I can't say I'm an expert at painting this type of landscape.  But I poured over the work of my favorite artists who paint the southwest to study their color use, since that's what I've found to be the challenge of this unique scenery.  I found that the colors that worked best for this type of landscape lean more toward pale, muted hues, rather than the vibrant versions of those colors we're tempted to try.  Since I wanted to focus on the shadows along the path for this painting, I bumped up the color intensity just in that area.  The scene used here for my demo from this morning's class is from Arizona, just outside of the Phoenix area.