Kentucky Waterfall - 9"x12" My First Plein Air Painting

I'm back.  After a long winter with lots of snow and cold, wet weather, I came out of hibernation.  You would think that after living in Kentucky for 20 years that I would be used to the cold.  I live through it, but I don't welcome it.  So! For Christmas, my husband bought a small, portable easel for me, and I've used it twice, now.  I've been wanting to try plein air for quite some time, but, well, obviously, being the kind of girl that lives for warm weather, I would never venture out to paint in the snow, for instance. Probably not in the rain, either, unless it was very light rain, and warm, at that.  So, Monday, I packed up my stuff, and walked down by one of our seating areas in the woods, and set up. 
    This is my first Plein Air painting!  The whole process took about 3 hours.  I cheated at the end of it, by looking back at the picture I took, thinking I needed to get the shadows right, because the sun had shifted since I started, and the shadows were different...(I'm sure those of you that do plein air painting on a regular basis have learned how to deal with this - paint the shadows first? Draw in the areas of shadow beforehand? Go out on a cloudy day?) Well..haha...the shadows work only with the appropriate amount of trees, I found out... and it became obvious that I had left out a few - trees, that is.  I can laugh about it...but I'm still trying to fix the shadows.  What's cool, though, is that I wasn't sure I could paint shadows, or if they would even 'look' like shadows at all.  And once I put them in there, I didn't think they would show up that much, or be that big a deal in the scheme of things.  But, noooo....they show up, all right, and look like shadows...(at least to me). And, they're the biggest annoyance to me about the whole painting.  I tried to work quickly, and not obsess, and overall, I'm very happy with it.  It's also fun knowing I can go out, set up, paint a painting, and get it done all in about 3 hours.  I can deal with a few shadows, now that I've got the sunshine back!