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Today, I got straight to sketching and experimenting. I first picked out a 12x24 canvas, which seemed to be a suitable size for the painting. I decided to just put the primary colors yellow, red, and blue onto my palette. That way, I could blend them together to basically make any color that I might want. I did a quick sketch of the mountain ranges, making the lowest part of the ranges a little bit off center to make the painting's composition a little bit more interesting. I began with the yellow, and then added a dab of red into the yellow to get a light orange. As I worked my way up, I added more red, then blue to get a gradient effect from warm colors to cold. I noticed that in the pictures, the blue wasn't very vibrant like in the daytime, but rather more grayish. To achieve the intensity of the photo, I tried not making the upper shades of the sky too bright. I ended up adding some white to the upper layers to give off a more dusty, cloudy feel. Though the upper layers of the sky were dimmer, I felt that the warmer tones needed to be even more vibrant. I added some white to the yellow, but now looking at it I might try to brighten up the other warm shades, as well. After finishing my first layer, I noticed that there was a lot of streaks in the warmer shades. With the advice of my art teacher, Mrs. Story, I tried to take away some excess paint on the canvas and create thinner layers. Though I'm not totally satisfied with the blending and overall look of my sky, I hope that once it dries I will be able to go back and perfect things!