Plateau take two.

Chisel pen + m. Graham wash in Holbein multi drawing book. About 10
minutes of work while Y was showering. Need to perfect the stealth
painting for when bunny comes.

Small studies of mountain aerial.

More Sandias.

Another try, this time on 300# Kilimanjaro paper with my full WN palette + a small study done later on a 140# watercolor strathmore visual journal page. The full version was done with an under-drawing traced from a digitally generalized image. Still needs work.

Sketch of Sandia Mountains from an aerial photo

 
I've been painting from a book of aerial images: "Over the Mountains , an aerial view of geology" by Michael Collier. The photos are beautiful but quite complex, and a challenge to paint from since the perspective (from the air) can be difficult to replicate correctly. But I keep trying.

This sketch was done without any pencil drawing. Just wet paint on dry paper. I feel more and more drawn to this approach as I like the spontaneity of it. I'm impatient and paint quickly, and first sketching out a pencil outline makes the process feel less fluid .  Despite the fact that it usually leads to better painting if I have a good pencil under-drawing I'm more drawn to just painting without it as it seems more instinctive. I am sketching almost daily to improve my drawing skills and maybe getting better at this will make it more enticing to draw in some initial sketch. Obviously value sketches are beneficial and I agree with my teacher that you can't paint it well if you can't draw it, but I'm hoping to eventually be able to paint "it" well without the line work, but to perhaps have  a separate drawing done beforehand as a guide.

I finally used up the last of the terrible Utrecht watercolor paper with this painting. I'm using a very limited M.Graham palette  supplemented with a bright green mixed from DaVinci PY3 Hansa light and WN PG36 phtalo green to try and replicate American Journey's Skip's green.

I'll try this piece again in a more deliberate way in my Kilimanjaro 300 pd paint book. I also just received 5 Saunders Waterford Fat Pads from the UK which I can't wait to try. But first I need to finish the Kili paper.