Adding Zest to a Landscape Painting

  Like many artists I am always questioning what subject and style direction I want to go in. I love painting outside. I love learning about new and exciting places to visit and seeing the true colors that a camera cannot capture. My landscape paintings however rarely give me the same excited feeling that the scene provided.

  I also love to paint wild animals and people. Since wild animals rarely stay still long enough to paint I must paint them from photos in the studio.
 
  I was contemplating my artistic dicotemy the other day and looked at the cover of a Southwest Art magazine. This painting by Edgar Payne really grabbed my attention. 
 The landscape is very nice but it is the figures and horses that make this painting interesting. Perhaps I can spice up my plein air painting from last week at the La Luz Trail area of the Sandia Mountain with some kind of animal or figure!





   There was a large rattlesnake that came to visit while I was painting but I don't want to scare the viewer. While painting I had thought about other wild animals in the area - chipmunks, bears and mountain lions. That big rock in my painting looked like the perfect spot for a mountain lion to enjoy the early morning sunshine.

I did some sketches, in black and white and in color.

  Then I put my lion into the painting.


What do you think, is it a more interesting painting?