Baie Verte - a picture's progress

LOL, I did something that I often thing about doing, essentially never do, when doing the "Baie Verte" painting. I took pictures of various stages of progress. A picture goes through so many "ugly" phases, I thought some might enjoy seeing how a picture progresses:

1) Here I've colored in the sky, the sketch is very rough, just some very rough darks to indicate where the trees are in the background.

2) More work has been done on the trees. I've laid in some background color for the grasses in the foreground.

3) More work on the trees, then laying in rough color for the water and embankments, with the bird sketched in. 

4) Work on the water in the distance, a little more detail in the embankments and the far marsh grasses. Mostly this stage is laying in the darks along the edges of the grass and water. 

5) A lot more detail now in the bird, water, and background grasses. Foreground still to come.

6) The grasses on the small island have now been worked on, mostly done except for the foreground now.
7) Some colors for the foreground.
8) Initial pastel strokes for the foreground grasses, showing a definitely "ugly" phase at this point. 

And of course the final image can be seen in my posting of the previous date. So there you see a little progression of how it goes, and for much of the stages it sure doesn't look like very much!