Portrait of yogananda complete

After letting this sit awhile as just blue yogananda, I decided to complete him by adding in color to give it more depth. I am still questioning whether he's done...I still could still tweak the robe a little and add some more dimension to his hair...but since I want the focus to be on his face and his eyes, I'm going to call it complete!

Pastel spirit animals

Just playing around with some pastels...the ones I had felt more like chalk. A new medium to experiment with, and on 6"x6" black paper. Just some 15 minute sketches of and eagle and owl.
I'm not sure why they are both birds, but I was focused on totems, or my spirit animals and this is what came to me...maybe this explains my dreams of flying!?

Blue Yogananda, a portrait in progress

I was working on a portrait of Paramahansa Yogananda, and started by just putting in the shadows with blue...and I got to this point and thought...I could just leave it just like this.
But it is missing some depth and color, so I will say it is still in progress.

Watercolor Dragonfly

My wife loves dragonflies and now that it is spring, they are all over the place! So a couple of weeks ago, partly inspired by fellow water colorist Kandi Thompson and her piece "Dragon Fly", I decided to paint a dragonfly. I started with a pencil sketch, and added in some background color, and then it sat on my art table for about 2 weeks...I'm not sure why I was stuck. Was it the translucent wings? Deciding the colors?
I finally sat down this morning and just whipped it out. Once I had the brush in my hand, the paint just flowed out of it...literally! Looking back, maybe it needed that time to process it, but once I put my mind to it, it happened. I think I just had a bad case of procrastination.

Buddha in primary colors

This painting had a different process than I usually do. The portrait was  inspired by a quick ball point pen sketch of a water fountain that I had done several months ago in a notebook.  Later, as I was going through the notebook, I thought that it might make an interesting painting, so I enlarged the sketch,  originally only 2" high.  The fountain was a blueish-grey color, which worked well for the ball point drawing, but I thought I would add some color to the painting.  So I worked with a limited palette of red, blue, and yellow to create " Buddha in Primary Colors".

Forest stream...photo progression

I've been a little slow creating this month, but here is a painting that was inspired by a demonstration by Juan Pena at the Sacramento Fine Arts Center. He makes it so easy, and although a lot of his work is plein air, he did this one from memory.  I love his bold colors and the loose, flowing style that he calls "representational watercolor". Here is my attempt at imitating his style.

Angel of light and love

My Artists Way group gets together once a month to be creative in some way or another, as well as getting us out of our comfort zones sometimes. This month we worked on collaborative projects to be donated to Collage for a Cure. It is a fun process working on a painting with another artist, bouncing creativity off each other yet practicing having no attachment.  I worked with fellow artist Teresa Rodriguez on this piece, using acrylic on watercolor paper. Acrylic is still not my favorite  medium,  but it sure made the process different  as we built up layers of paint, very unlike watercolor.
I also have to give credit to Tina Greene for coordinating the donation process, and helping with the framing!