Some progress has been made in the canyon ... all of the rock work has had its color treatment and some of the plantings are starting to appear along the slopes. Still haven't started to address the canyon floor where ultimately a river will exist.
The view to the left shows one side of the canyon with the rock partially colored but without much in the way of plantings ... is that actually a train I see crossing the bridge?
The view to the right shows the same area after much growth appeared sometime later. The rock coloring techniques used followed the Bragdon methods using the color pigments supplied with his standard kit. I tended overall toward the grays and blacks although there is still the underlying sienna and umber tones, and in some areas more noticeable streaks of burnt sienna or yellow oxides. Prior to adding all of these colors, I did use the black tempura wash to bring out the cracks and emphasize shadows. All in all, it looks pretty good seen under reasonable lighting conditions.
Here are a few more views in this area of the slope. All of these photos weren't taken under idea lighting conditions ... I'm just starting to play with a different camera for taking the photos but unfortunately the light in the room that I took most of these is not close to representing daylight. Because of that, I've resorted to a bit of image correction using my picture manager's built-in capability ... helps some but still not quite right. The next step is to get a better lighting system for a more natural appearance.
I won't be adding all that much more plantings until after I get the canyon floor moving along. No need to have a bunch of trees getting in the way of the work that I'll have to do in that relatively tight space.