I wanted to paint a dark barn against a sunset and so far it is coming out ok. The sky is very rich in color, just what I was looking for. Here in the midwest deep moving sunsets are quite common yet I try to appreciate them and take a minute to stop and pay attention to it.
The farther south we go in Iowa the more we see rolling hills and beef cattle. Between the towns of Lacona and Chariton it is very hilly and you see those dark cows grazing along the pastures.
Paintings are a strange thing. The unfinished version of this sat for almost a week. Just the sky was painted in but I didn't like it and the more I looked at it the more I wanted to redo it. Finally I said to myself "Self, you can't wreck it more than it is so just see what happens!" The more I painted the more I liked it and the sky was the perfect backdrop for this rural scene.
I pass this house and buildings each Sunday morning on the way to church and have been waiting for just the right time when the sun was illuminating it's left side. My goal is for that side of the house to be the only part of the painting lit by the sun.
I haven't been adding animals and such to my farm scenes in quite a while and my family pointed out they needed some "life". The geese that fly over farms in the fall heading south are a sure sign winter is on the way.
I've added several white barns to set against the dark trees on the horizen. Notice the flock of geese making their way across the sky. The foreground needs to be put in and the painting will be done.
I laid in this sky with a opaque white. It really smoothes out the paint and allows me go back into it and rework particular areas that I'm not happy with.
This little painting I finished in one evening this past weekend. I put the sky and foreground in the first evening then the buildings, trees, and finishing touches the next. The camera seems to have washed out the lighter grasses in the pasture so I'm either going to retake the photo or darken the light colored grasses.
I've been trying to work out some vivid color lately so here is the start of a bright painting. Sometimes at sunset the sky is layered with the horizen being orange, yellow, blue-gray, then blue. It's beautiful in nature but hard to capture on paper.
Here is a fun painting to design and paint. Roads that lead into a painting seem so natural but must be placed just right or they don't seem to fit so I take pictures once and a while of just roads and tractor trails through fields.
Here is the same location as the previous post but done in acrylic. I like the finish of acrylics and am trying to get my watercolors to have some of the characteristics of acrylics but still have the ease of watercolors that I'm use to. 
There is a lot of cool blue in this painting but the red of the barns warms it up nicely. The well warn lane leads your eye right into the painting.
Here is a good example of my process of working on two paintings at one time. The one on the right is the watercolor and the one on the left is acrylic on canvas board. I'll show them both seperately as I finish them. My family likes the watercolor better but I prefer the acrylic, probably because it's somethng new for me.