A watercolor giraffe, enjoying a taste of the air. I like painting animals without a model or picture sometimes. It brings it all back home for me, that being the way I started. I used to never use references, thinking, "well that's not creative, your basically just copying". But soon enough I started using them, and really liked it. I realized how different the paintings really were than the pictures, how you can add so much feeling to, say, a cat portrait, and there definitely is creativity involved. I still think I like painting from my mind better, though. Its a lot more fun, not knowing whats going to come out sometimes.