Mountain landscape - pencil sketch

This sketch was inspired by a demonstration put on by WASH (Watercolor Art of Sacramento Horizons) at Sacramento Fine Arts Center.  The demo was done by Dale Laitinen.  I really enjoyed his style of watercolor, and even though he was painting a scene from memory, he really captured the essence of the Sierras.  
So here is my interpretation of his painting, but in pencil.

Untitled, by Dale Laitinen

In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pencil sketch

I always slip into my comfort zone when I am feeling artistically blocked...and that would be pencil sketching. It's very forgiving.
Since I had the day off in honor of Martin Luther King, I decided to go online and find one of his many stock photos. Not having a printer readily accessible, I  traced a few simple lines right off the computer screen to get started.

 I know that there are all of these amazing ultra-realistic drawings out there, but some how it just doesn't do it for me...I want to see some brush strokes, pencil marks...some remnant of the artist. It also allows me to leave the "perfectionism" out of my work.

Red Flowers in watercolor

This painting was inspired by a video posted by Mikko Tyllinen on Google + demonstrating how he painted "Blue Flowers". I love how loose his painting is and how he takes advantage of watercolors' unique qualities. Here is my attempt at imitating his work although I changed the color profile from blue to red. I have put my paiting on the left and stills from the video on the right to show approximately what step I was working toward.

Quick pencil sketch 

first washes going onto the paper

working very wet, already I can see my colors aren"t as bold

Trying to put some bold colors in, A lot of bleeding colors

 At this point, I feel it is almost done ,but I'm not even halfway through the video! Mikko has a way that he keeps working the painting to get more depth but as I continue, it seems to get overworked. And I;m trying so hard to keep some of those white spaces 

Mikko states that his total paint time is 16 minutes. I took me about 30 minutes including some drying time in between. This was a great exercise in keeping my painting loose but I think I need to work on putting bolder color into my painting.