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I painted this for a collector who came to me after seeing my auctions on ebay. She had lost the auction by a few pennies so I contacted her and she agreed to let me paint another rendition. I use Jack White's double primary palette: two red, two blue, and two yellow colors. Using a limited palette has enabled me to learn to mix all of my greens from scratch. Green has to be the most difficult color to master. There are so many variations of it and it is the most prominent color in most natural settings. 

I typically begin painting directly without drawing but I wanted to be make those rocks precise so I sketched it with charcoal. 

Here's a screenshot of my original painting and two photo references.

I have found Adobe Photoshop to be very useful for mixing colors. You can turn up the saturation to reveal the mother color of the grey areas, or you can use the sample tool to select an area to reveal its color. Even for professional artists it is not always easy to tell because a color changes depending what it is next to.

I use a combination of ultramarine blue + alizarin crimson to do the initial blocking in. 

Now for the flowers

Permanent Magenta, Pthalo Rose plus a little kiss of Cadmium Red Light

I like to start with magenta + rose and work from back to front, warming the color as it gets "closer" to you. At this point I am pretty pleased because the customer is happy. She asked for some birds and I happily obliged.

A few days to dry and then off to Louisianna.