Scary Wash Over

One of the techniques I use is a transparent "wash over".  It can be done as a oil/medium wash and then paint right into the wet, or as in this one above, a turpentine wash with some ultramarine blue added and then let it dry.
The goal is, first to drop the value down a step or two. Second, and really the most important, to create a color edge that will stay with the painting and harmonize all the tones, in all the areas.
The scary part is that I can, for a while, completely hide (or ruin) the entire painting and I just have to trust myself that I can get it back.
In the last few years, I have also been working in acrylic, it's just so easy to wash over, wait 20 minutes and start painting again, but oil washing this way means that I do it at the end of the day and go home. UGH!
The reason I did it this time was to get a "depth of darkness" in the forest.

Two at a Time

This is the first day at the easel, working on these roosters. They are in oil on 36"sq. canvases.

They are a combinations of sights that I have seen several times while driving around the area.
I live in the woods. This area was once completely deforested for farmland. Then when that industry declined the land was left to regrow the trees. Now the entire area is a fractured forest mixed with horse farms. Most of the back roads have trees growing right to their edges and in the late afternoon the light comes through the trees. It can look like a strobe that keeps your eye from completely grabbing the scene.
Some people keep chickens and work small farm plots This maybe closer to the way it was when this area was first developed in the mid 1600's. Many properties, including my own, have stone walls, some that date back to Dutch, and then English settlers.
There is great enthusiasm for "free range" chickens and eggs. I love the eggs and we will buy my friend's Blue Moon Farm eggs even at 3x the price.
Free range poultry like the edges of the woods and fields since they must worry about foxes, coyotes and hawks.