Catching Up - Slowly

Don't know about you, but the heat out here this week is making me sluggish. I'm up to 17 in the #30x30DirectWatercolor2018 challenge, so have a few more to go to catch up to where I'm supposed to be.

I pass this lovely San Jose building (the City National Civic theatre) on my way to work, so I snapped a photo and tried painting it in a more opaque, gouache-y style:



To me it feels more "illustration" than "sketch" - what do you think?

My inspiration for these next two was Season 3 of Mozart in the Jungle, streaming via Amazon Prime. Much of the action is set in Venice, so I pulled out my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolors and a large pad of Canson paper to play with:



No real subjects -- just my imagination.



I'm crushing on the metallic colors in that set -- aren't those shimmery gold accents fun? Might have to use that in some other paintings going forward.

And here's a quick sketch from a photo I took in Big Sur a while ago: