My Irish Painting!!

About a month ago Freespiral posted this image. I loved the feeling of it, and because i'm totally in painting mode...i immediate thought what a rich and magical image it would be to work with. There is a dream like quality to be found here! Freespiral happily agreed to send me the jpeg so i could work from the image! Now this is where you (and I) have to take a huge leap of imagination.....this is only the underpainting.....just a laying in of the values in the image! Right now it seems such a far cry from the photograph....but i have faith! I've got quite a challenge ahead of me, but that's partly what excites me! When you're painting with pastels you do many layers of colours and textures to reach your idea! so, thank you Freespiral....i hope you don't mind but i've done a bit of cropping.....i'm trying to boil down the essence of this most stunning place you photographed so beautifully.

This is the best part of the painting....no terrible errors to correct yet :) with all that beautiful colour to be added and layered...i'm excited!

I realise i also feel a bit worried....using someone's vision and mucking about with it.....not done this before!!! oh hell...how bad can it get :P