ANIMAL AND WILDLIFE CHALLENGE FEB/MARCH 2026

[Donna T]

Spectacular fish, Joy, and I love the background!

 

[LizC]

Joy, the fish watercolor turned out wonderful, I like how the colors in the background blend without any hard lines, well done!

 

[Grapes]

Joy, adding to my previous comment: your painting is stunning!!
I'm amazed of your talent and skill with the animals and the fish paintings!

The past days I've been finishing old landscape paintings with hopes to finally being able to finish them and although I have two animal challenge paintings started I still need few more days to finish them. Happy painting everyone!

 

[LizC]

Here's my watercolor version of the lion cub, I'm not that happy with how it turn out and I forgot to scrape in the whiskers when I photographed it.

 

[Joy]

Liz, that is beautiful and very soft, natural looking fur. I didn't even notice the whiskers were missing, but you can add them with white paint or white CP.

 

[LizC]

Thanks, I thought the opposite, that the brushstrokes have hard edges with no soft blending between strokes. What's CP?

 

[Grapes]

Liz, excellent lion cub! I do like it a lot. The colors are lovely and he's looking at you with intense and cute eyes.

 

[Joy]

Liz, CP = colored pencil. You can also use a fine liner pen (like Posca or Uni-ball Signo) that is waterproof to quickly draw in whiskers. I agree that they can look very natural when scratched in, but I don't seem to have much luck with doing it at the appropriate time of dryness.

 

[Enyaw]

Great depiction Liz.

 

[Donna T]

That cub looks quite furry to me, Liz. Beautiful work!

 

[LizC]

Thank you everyone, Joy, while I was looking at gel pens reviews, a lot of people are using the white ones in their watercolors. I think that would be a good alternative to scratching out white, which by the way I'm not that good at either.

 

[joe1It]

Wonderful art.
Thanks for reference Patricia

My attempts 2 digital,1 with pen

 

[Joy]

Very nice, Joe. Great to see your work again!

 

[joe1It]

Very nice, Joe. Great to see your work again!

Joy, thanks very much

 

[pcj]

Joe: Lovely drawings! I especially like the squirrel.
Welcome back ! It's very nice to see you again !
Cheers
Patricia

 

[joe1It]

Patricia, thanks very much for nice words
the squirrel is the one I drew in pen on an A5 sketchbook

 

[Sanlynn]

Thanks for hosting with these fantastic reference photos for us, Patricia.
Grapes, your perky squirrel and lion cub are so well done. The cat sketch is just right.
Jade, I really like the colours you've achieved in your Golden Pheasant. Your squirrel is really cute.
LizC, the two versions of the lion cub are really well done. I can't decide which one I like the most.
Joy, your Blue Spotted Rabbit fish is perfect and I love how you've done the background.
Joe, your sketches are always nice to view. The movement in the horse is wonderful.

 

[Sanlynn]

I took some time this afternoon to quickly paint the Meerkat in gouache on the tinted paper. It's about 4X6".

 

[Joy]

Sandra, this is absolutely wonderful and looks like you put spent enough time on it. The portrayal of the direction of the fur, the sparkle in the eyes, and the delicate whiskers all add to the effect. Thanks so much for posting this.

 

[LizC]

That's quite some detail for a quickly made painting, well done