Wolf, pencil sketch

My daughter has been asking me to draw or paint a wolf ever since I painted our cat, Rosie for her. This is my first attempt, with some help from google images. I just used a #2 pencil. I really like the way the eyes turned out but need to work on the proportons a little, and really need to figure out the hair...

Seagull in watercolor

This painting was inspired by a photo posted by a fellow painter in the Group Watercolor PaintingGroup Watercolor Painting community. Most of the seagull was painted with Payne's grey, which I have been using a lot for shadows. The wing on the top is foreshortened in my reference photo, but I can't help but see it as cut off in my painting.

Natural Bridges, watercolor

Another seascape inspired from my Santa Cruz vacation back in June. This was done from a photograph I had taken and done completely in my studio. With each one of these seascapes, I feel I get a better grasp of the waves. I have to really think ahead where to leave my whites. I was also trying to capture the reflection of the rock in the wet sand.

Round mound and Nevada beach revised

Frequently when I am painting outdoors, I miss details that I don't notice until I get back to my studio. This painting of Round Mound and Nevada Beach was one of those that needed a little revision once I got back indoors, especially since toward the end, I was focused more on the impending storm than the painting.
My original plan was to have the painting's focus be on the clouds and they just weren't capturing my eye, so I reworked them to be a little more eye-catching. Of course I also realized if I don't want the viewer to focus on the hill and beach, I would need to rename it as well...Impending Summer Storm

Study of orange slices

This painting was inspired from a photo posted by a fellow painter in the Group Watercolor Painting community. The challenging part of this is that although they are oranges, they are quite yellow, but my brain keeps saying orange.

Round Mound and Nevada Beach

So I decided to find a spot without the crowds..a tough thing to do anywhere along Lake Tahoe. I went for a walk starting at Lakeside Beach and went past the No Trespassing signs (with fine print that says "ok to pass at waters edge"). I found a nice shady spot under a tree, and started to paint Round Mound...yes, that's the official name, I looked it up.  My main focus of this painting was the clouds (but I did get caught in the trees). The thunderheads were building quick, and you can tell by the how dark it got that I finished just in time.

Plain air painting at Lakeside Beach

Trying to escape the heat, my family headed up to South Lake Tahoe. The scenery up there never disappoints. One of our favorite beaches is Lakeside Beach. Although the beach can get pretty crowded, if you get there before noon, it's not to bad. I scoped out a spot back among the trees to avoid getting any more sunburned than I had the day before and started to paint. Already the sunbathers were out and I had to determine how many of them would make it into my painting.
I narrowed it down to three although my original sketch had 5. Painting subjects while they are moving around is quite a challenge, and although these sunbathers didn't move around too much, it was enough. I'm not sure I'm happy with the composition of the painting. I need to crop out some of the sand. The focus of the painting is also unclear: the lake and mountains, the sailboat, the sunbathers, the clouds?

Lighthouse revisited

So after letting this sit for a while, I decided I needed to lighten the lighthouse in my Santa Cruz seascape. I lifted the black with a wet brush, scrubbing it the best I could without overworking the paper. I added some pops of green to the lighthouse, which was the color actually in my reference photo but too washed out by the light to see(as cameras do) but I had other shots of the lighthouse from other angles. Green is also the complimentary color to the red in the sail. Then to balance the color out I added green to the rocks, giving it a mossy look! I still need to work on subjects that are backlit, but for now, I think this is finished!

Lighthouse detail - the green is still hard to see because of the photo

Revised

Original