Leaves on Stairs.

Here's another Autumn scene. I think this may be my first work that included some architectural design. It was from a photo reference.

Autumn Pond.

This was just another quick exercise in trying to get a looser style going. There was a really nice photo in our local paper this morning of a tree at the edge of a pond. There were ducks in the pond and more ducks flying in for a landing. OBVIOUSLY, I didn't paint from that photo - LOL!! However, it did give me an image in my head that I painted from. I guess this was simplification to the max. I'm just so happy to have some time to paint lately!!

June Lake Aspens.

June Lake is on the eastern side of the California-Nevada Sierra Mountains. Along one side of the lake are aspens that have glorious color in the autumn. When my children were growing up, we went camping at June Lake every year and have many fond memories of our time there when we would fish and hike. One year as we were hiking, our Alaskan Malamute, Nikki, thought she could ford a rapidly moving stream. She was caught up and went down a very steep, boulder strewn waterfall! We all went tearing down the mountain after her (I don't know why we did this as there was no way any one of us could've gotten her out of that predicament). She got herself out with only one minor cut below her eye. She was very stiff and sore the next day, but handled it all rather well. We still think of that time and know it was nothing short of a miracle that she survived! Bears from nearby Yosemite would visit this campground frequently. One time we were sitting around our evening campfire and I actually smelled the bear that walked past our camp - a very musky odor! The next day we heard from fellow campers that this particular bear had sat near their tent and watched as their tethered dog barked at him. He must've known the dog couldn't charge and was quite arrogant about it. My memories are so vivid of this place and this painting does NOT do it justice. Maybe someday I'll be able to really capture the magnificence of it.

Red Apples. I wanted to do something really quick and also a bit loose -- I REALLY need practice with "loose!!" This was a good exercise and was fun to work on.
It is apple harvest season and my DH and I went to Tehachapi yesterday afternoon for a BBQ with some friends. I'd hoped to go early enough to buy some apples at one of the orchards, but time didn't allow. I guess that's why I had apples on my mind today and decided to paint this from a reference photo.

Autumn Stream.

Well, here's another autumn landscape for this month's theme. I'm just not happy with this, but posted it anyway because it's good to see improvement later on - ha. I just really, really want to get to the point where my watercolors are more washy. Maybe it's a "control" issue and I want to control the paint instead of just letting it flow where it wants. I think the palette is okay and there are lights and darks, maybe there should be more of those though. Ugh! Reference photo is from Zion National Park and I left out the big Watchman Mountain in the background -- I like challenges, but that was a bit much.

Autumn Tree.

Continuing with the autumn/harvest theme in Kate's Alumni group, I found the reference photo for this on Flickr. I'm especially happy with the little stream and how it really does appear to be fading away into the horizon. The pigments used on the tree trunk are darker than they appear on the scan - actually, the whole thing is darker than scanned! I enjoyed doing this little landscape and still want to do some more this month.

Cabernet Revised. I've added more leaves and grapes and also shaded the right side of the clusters to create the light source. It's still not what I had in my brain, but I think it's an improvement.

Now. . . back to my book studying to prepare to do a autumn landscape.