The corn field in front of our house has a lone cedar tree on its edge, and when the winter sun sets in the valley, one strip of sunlight illuminates it and the golden field right before dusk. I started this painting at a workshop I taught at the French Lick Artisan Gallery this past winter. I really happy with the final result of muted blues and yellows. It is a good to branch out from the very green paintings of summer. When teaching the workshop, we started with the traditional monochromatic underpainting-this one in burnt sienna. Then, I blocked in the large areas of color (bottom image) and continued to add detail on top. When composing the painting, I was intrigued and played around with the overlapping diagonal curves.