Vine Maple Trail amended

I felt something is amiss after look at the finished painting for a few days.  I found it to be a little bland.  Lacking oomph!  My eyes were wandering all over the image, finding no place to indulge.

I decided to ham it up a little. I wanted to accentuate the shadows on the trail.  I needed to restore the difference between light and dark.  I know light values assume a somewhat different presentation in Chinese brush, but I don't profess that this is a traditional Chinese brush either, :p

Trying to lay down water based color on top of a surface finished with gel medium is next to impossible.  The color just sits on top, beading up, as if water on glass.  So I took some gesso and mixed in the color I wanted and made my own color paste.  This worked exceedingly well.  Good enough to show brush marks!