The main thing I want to do here is to establish the darker areas of the painting. I mix some French Ultramarine and Light Red, because I am not using a lot of water the resulting mixture is quite concentrated and this is how I want it.

I start by defining some of the joints in the stonework in the wall and then I follow that by applying the same technique to the outbuilding on the right. I also need to apply some shadows to the fence, that will sharpen it up a little. I now need some sunlight in the painting to bring it to life, the easy way any artist can do that is by looking for an obvious light source and then painting cast shadows off solid objects. In this case the chimney's are the ideal object, after that I add darker shadow to the base of objects, such as the wall and fence.

By painting the house very light early on I can now see a good way that I can apply contrast to give added depth to the painting. On the left hand side I will paint the trees very dark, much darker than they are.
The result is a sharp contrast that can only improve the painting, you will notice that as the trees get closer to the ground I get darker and darker. This is what I call an application of 'artists licensce'.