4.17.2011

Still Life and Dappling

Still life at Honl Bay - 9x12 - oils on board

This was painted only a few days after “the excitement”, which is to say the tsunami.  The waves had set up this little still life and raked the sea grass into an interesting tangle.  Here I had my new colors (Gamblin professional oils rather than the student grade stuff that they sell at Ace Hardware) working well and I even managed to stifle my inclinations and tone down the far away palms.

Dapple Fantasia at Kaloko Ponds - 11x14 - oils on board


A lot of vibrant brushwork going in here and some wonderful dappling effects in the colorful shadows.

5x7 Quickies

Gussie's Hammock - Keauhou Bay - 7x5 - oils on board



Wanted to do some little quickies to see how they sell and just to unlimber into these new paints.  Each one took about 50 years and 45 minutes (50 years of iving experience and 45 minutes of real painting time).  I hope they look like they were as much fun as they were to do.

We go to Gussie Pace's estate at Keauhou Bay sometimes for a painting session and this is her hammock with the bay in the background – the next one is her concrete pond – it somehow just reminded me of Beverly Hillbilies.


Gussie's Concrete Pond - Keauhou Bay
5x7 - oils on board



Early Morning Palm Andante - City of Refuge
5x7 - oils on board


The one above and the next two I made up (confessions of a plein ar painter) and I think I enjoyed the first two more.

Palm Allegro - City of Refuge
5x7 - oils on board



Morning Respite - 5x7 - oils on board



Fred & Ginger and Friends

Fred and Ginger do Anaeho'omalu Bay
12x14 - oils on board


Fred & Ginger dancin’ dancin’ is about 50% plein air and 50% studio.  I really got carried away painting the negative space around all of the twigs and branches (I love that negative space)   See detail below:



Waiting Canoes - Keauhou Bay - 20x24
oils on stretched canvas


One of my favorite pieces and about 75% plein air.  What excites me is the liquid handling of the dappling on the canoes and the way the strong backlighting works in the foliage at the upper left.  Strong light coming through foliage fuzzes out all of the detail.


Big Surf at Wawaloli Point - 14x11 - oils on board


We had some wonderfully big surf a few weeks ago and since my painting group goes out once a week we managed to catch some of it.  On the next older page there’s a painting from almost exactly the same location on a nice calm day.

Church and Shadows

Christ Episcopal Church - Kealakekua - 14x11 - oil on board


Voggy cloudy day (vog=volcanic smog) and I think I caught that here, I diluted most of my colors with white and started with a yellow ochre canvas instead of my typically cadmium yellow light one.  Also I moved some of the tombstones around a little – no big deal – I once moved Maui about two miles.

Kayak at Manini Beach - 10x8 - oils on board


Manini is mostly a coral beach and may still be but I haven’t been there since “the excitement”  (tsunami).  There was one movie of the damage here that made the national news of one of the
 houses around this beach floating out to sea in Kealakekua Bay.

Keiki Pond at Waealoli Point - 14x11 - oils on board


The companion piece to the big wave painting on the newer page.  Here I was concentrating on the foreground which I usually dash in at the end of the session in a couple of minutes, here,and in Christ Church, I made more of an effort and it really paid off.

Morning Mist at Waialea Beach - 14x11 - oils on board

Pauls Place and Other Fun Stuff

Not-a-flower - 6x6 - oils on board
Not-a-flower was a practice piece that I did concentrating on the transparent aspects of certain oil color pigments.   "Not-a-flower" because I just made it up!


Surf Path at Kaloko Ponds - 8x10 - oils on board
Nice hot day at Kaloko Ponds!   Here i was mostly concerned with the shadows in the foreground.   Shadows aren't just blank darknesses for me, they have colors and vibrancies within them - I usually try to paint them and the dappling as if they were liquids.

Ecstacy Palm - 8x8 - oils on board




Pauls Place - Holualoa -  - oils on board

This little store in Holualoa was the center of that old town, and still is except the community has changed from rural coffee land to a kind of Art colony.

Wave Lense and Company

Life Guard Tower, Kahalu'u - 10x8 - oils on board
They've started to replace these fine old colorful guard towers with some made out of fibreglas and totally lacking in charm or color - I was lucky to get this one befoe it was replaced.   I painted this from the Kalenakai Grill at the Keauhou Beach Outrigger Resort.

Little Blue Church at the Pali - Napo'opo'o
oils on board
A very active piece painted from Manini Beach with the pali quickly sketched on and a white mist behind the nearest palm trees.

Kua Bay Wave Lense - 18x12 - oils on paper
We usually paint in the morning when the light is best and low.  At Kua Bay the light streams over the saddle at first light and gets refracted onto the sandy bottom at the base of the waves as they come to shore creating a chartreuse band that moves along with the breakers - a wonderful sight and very difficult to paint.

Kalenakai Pond and Palm Studies

Honokohau Canoe Shed - 8x10 - oils on board
This wonderful canoe shed stands at the National Park to the North side (Kohala) of the marina inlet where the old "naked" beach used to be (they don't like that anymore).

Kalenakai Pond at the Keauhou Outrigger Resort
18x20 - oils on board
The Keauhou Outrigger Resort is one of the richest and most convenient locations to paint in Kona.  It's target rich (plenty of different kind stuff for paint) and very close to downtown and parking with Kahalu'u Beach park to one side.  This pond is a beautiful feature of the grounds and draws my attention often for a new painting.   It doesn't matter how may times you've painted it, there is always something different and new.

Locals' Table at Magic Sands - 14x11 - oils on board
Magic Sands Beach is also one of my favorites for different reasons - there are almost always people relating to each other and to the surf.  A good place to pick out families and groups of people to paint.

Raving Rivalets at Wawaloli - 10x8 - oils on board
Wawaloli is out at the Natural Energy Laboratories of Hawaii just off Queen Ka'ahumanu - a good place to go when the surf is really pumping.  This location is up at the Kohala end near where the piping for the geothermal plant comes out of the sea.

Translucent Palm Morning - 10x8 - oils on board
Another "I made this one up" as a means to experiment with more transparency.   This one fairly glows in full sunlight.  I also think this is the first painting I did after acquiring a tube of dioxinine purple - does it show?

Light Rain with Surf - 8x10 - oils on board
From a photograph taken at the City of Refuge it was raining up and down the coast but I wanted to paint and tried to capture the feeling of the rain outside.

Wind and Surf - 8x10 - oils on board





4.16.2011

Fred & Ginger and the Coffee Festival

Fred & Ginger do Anaeho'omalu Bay #1
14x11 - oils on board
This was my first painting of this famous duo and hadn't even noticed the coorelation until i had finished the other one.  Here my emphasis is on the roots and their interaction with the ground and each other.


Alaina's Coffee Farm, Keauhou - 16x20
oils on stretched canvas

Entered this in the Kona Coffee Festival art competition and got either second or third place, don't remember which.  My main consolation was that the other two finishers were both from my group the West Hawaii Plein Air Painters.

4.15.2011

the old Hilton and buckets of palms

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Stately Old Palms, City of Refuge - 14x11 - oils on board
At the City of Refuge there are some areas where they don't trim the palms, they just let the old palm fronds hang from the head creating a wonderful skirt that sways in the breeze.

The Old Hilton, Kailua-town - 8x10 - acrylics on board
I painted this one of my favorite hotel (love those neo-egyptian revival columns) during one of my gigs at the Ali'i Sunset Gallery.  One of my few acrylics.   I don't particularly like acrylics for a lot of reasons but principally because they're not opaque enough.


Jeune Morning - 8x8 - oils on board
Sky/cloud practice - we don't get a lot of interesting cloud formations here but this day was special - painted somewhere up Kohala way.


Evening Light Palms - 8x7 - oils on board
Another successful experiment in minimalist painting.

Paint the Wind

Visit the painting at my website here:  Paint the Wind