Plein Air Watercolors and some pen and ink

The other day I decided I really needed to get out and try to do some plein air painting. I walked down to a fairly local park and sat myself down for about an hour and painted. The above tree was my main result. The trees are a type of locust, probably sunburst honey locust since the new growth is a sunny yellow. Hmm the tips in my painting don't look very yellow but that is the scanner making the yellow more orange than it looks in real life.

I was using my Strathmore sketchbook for this so the paper is all wrong for watercolor. I am going to attempt to make my own sketchbook with paper that should hold up a bit better to water, but that is still for the future. I wasn't brave enough to attempt a building just yet. One of these days that is where I need to go.

The above started out as a pen and ink doodle then I got inspired to add the fish and then more ink work. Thought it needed a bit of something so added the colored pencil. Colors in the background were chosen because they are the complementary colors (red-green, orange-blue, yellow-violet) to those in the fish. Again the yellow is reading more orange when scanned.

I did this drawing just prior to painting the tree. For this one I did some sketching first with pencil, added a bit of pen work then added watercolor. Again this is in my sketchbook so the paper is not the best. The plant is cow vetch, the leaves aren't bad but I only approximated the flowers. Color isn't bad, but you would have trouble guessing shape from what I painted.

I have two photographs today, above is one of the sunburst honey locust trees in the park so you can see approximately what I was trying to paint. I wasn't painting this particular tree, but the background for this tree really shows off the new yellow growth.

Photographed this flower on my walk back from the park. I think I would have liked the photo better if the flower had been in the sun, but still I rather like the image. The lit yard behind makes it look like a window on the garden, when actually I was looking between fence posts.

That is it for today, per usual comments are welcome.