Recent Train Art Painting

Here are some recent step-by-step pics of a painting I executed for a new Exhibit at the St louis Artists' guild.The theme of the show was "TRAINS, PAST..PRESENT..AND FUTURE"
Unfortunately, i missed the entry deadline for this particular piece of art, but I did manage to get an earlier effort completed and it WAS ACCEPTED into the show.
Here are the stages of development, beginning with the final pencil concept.

The next stage was to project my pencil onto the working surface. I used a stretched canvas as my base.
After completing the underdrawing, I applied a thin, semi-transparent layer of burnt sienna Acrylic, directly over the drawing.
You can see, at this stage, that i'm thinking about a change to the train image. I didn't care to be looking at the back end of the train on the mid-left side, so I just changed it to be coming directly into frame from the left side.
The next step was to begin painting in the sky area, by scumbling in some fairly thin acrylic paint. At this stage I am not trying to be too careful, or trying to complete any one part of the picture.

From here on in, it's just a matter of letting the painting "talk" to me about value and hue.
I decided to add a river in the extreme foreground as a way of directing the viewers' eye INTO THE PICTURE FRAME.
In general, I like to work from the back towards the front of the picture plane. You can see that unfolding in the third and fourth pics. plus I have begun to fill in all the clouds to semi-complete the upper sky area by this stage.

The final images shown here show the various stages of finished development of the work, leading up to the framed artwork.
I hope you learned a few things in looking over this step-by-step process. Let me know what you think with your comments.
I'll be posting other works on a weekly basis, on this BlogSpot.