I've never painted a southwest landscape before. I did this fairly quickly and I feel that it can't be done, but I'm really OK with the way it looks and don't know what I would add to it.

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That is very, very nice! I like it a lot!

I wouldn't add anything to it, it looks good to me. Hard to believe that it was done quickly, looks like there was a lot of work put into it. Well done.

Thank you Susan and Liz. I guy from Arizona mentioned that I might want to add a wild flower or two. I think I might do that just for a splash of color. Nothing much.

Hi Terry. Love this painting. Should cactus be that green? I feel like they need to be toned down. Of course as I've found out, it could just be the photograph.

I've been experimenting with digitally adjusting my photos and it seemed to work on this morning photo.

The cactus are all wrong with the color, proportions and shape. The sky doesn't look like what we have in Arizona. Maybe you meant it to be more of an abstract.

Thanks Dick. This is from a Kevin Hill tutorial and he made his cactus very green so I just followed his lead. I'm guessing cactus are really lighter or darker?

One picture attached is my painting with the tweaking I just did and the other is the tutorial picture. Yeah I went rough on it. I couldn't get the spoiler feature to work.

Darn it -- seems I can only upload one picture to a post at a time. What's with that!

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Whatever you do @just , don't try to be diplomatic. We wouldn't recognize you.

Sure why not Just -- it's an impression of the Southwest.

BTW how would you change the cactus. Saying it's not right doesn't help me improve. This is one of the reference photos.

Amazing how Arizona has a different sky...and here I thought we all had the same. I guess you are meaning it should be darker because of clearer air? Or Lighter because of the bright sunshine? You're not helpful by just saying it's wrong Just. Please be more specific.

And yes I would not believe it was you without the curtness.

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Funny looking things aren't they? I have never been to Arizona or any other state that has deserts and cacti.

I see a lot of lines in these that are missing from your painting. Maybe you don't want to get that much detail in the distant ones but maybe your foreground ones to make them more believable. More shadow. I know you said this was just a quick one, do you plan to do another one in more detail?