I finished another painting from our trip west, this one Washington State, "In the Cascades" (16x20, wood panel). For this one I used a sketch I had made on site. I am finding that I don't really like to paint from pictures, even though I sometimes use them, and obviously had to in my bird series.
I enjoyed doing this one. The sketch is below, so you can see I just took the basic idea, and went from there.
This was the actual spot. The painting could have gone different ways. When we were there I really liked the yellow flowers growing between the rocks along the raging river, so that is what I made sure to put in the painting. I loved the time we spent there, and the hike we took!