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

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.

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.

More Palms - just can't get enough of them

Morning Palms & Hualalai - Kaloko Palms
8x10 - acrylics on board

Another acrylic this was a celebration of palms, the shadows on them and the shadows that they create.  

Another study - having earned the epithet of "redrum" because of the amount of cadmium red I usually use, I decided to paint for a week without it - these two and some others, were the result.

Cloud study - early evening.

Short Painting Demo - Homage to a painting by Darrell Hill

i've added music to this demo - turn your speakers up and enjoy!

A Real Cigarbox Pochade

Was looking around the bedroom the other day (no bed – just a lot of stored stuff – need the room) and found a good sturdy tripod that I used to use for photo work (my new camera is smaller than a pack of cigarettes) and an empty cigar box – so – I designed a smaller paint box to use for plein air.

Here’s the look of it:


The lid will be used as the easel so I added this strong bracket to one side for support – also the bottom has been modified to fit the top of the tripod.

 
 
 
 
 

I had to cut and sand down the brushes so they’d fit. The mixing palette is a piece of Plexiglas.
 
 

Emptying the box – the wooden “C” shaped pieces insert through holes in the sides to create side boards (I borrowed that detail from one my dad used on his paint-box).
 
 
 
 
 
 

The box on the tripod with the side boards clipped on – all of it attached to the tripod.

The box fully set up and ready – the rolled up bamboo placemat becomes one of the side boards – the mixing palette the other.  The paints are stored in a small plastic divided box that fake fingernails come in - the top closes firmly and when not in use I store the box in the refrigerator.

 
 
 
 
and . . . so there it is.

Painting Out There - Shadow Patterns @ Honokohau

oils on stretched canvas - 12x14

One of my absolute favorite pieces - i had my box and canvas set up under a tree at the harbor entrance ready to paint this wacky (i don't think i've ever used that word before, but it fits) tree and noticed the shadows on the canvas and decided - "what the hell?!" and painted them as fast as i could. My favorite because of how the piece came about and because of the wonderful texture of the paint.

What is it, anyway?

To me painting isn’t a conscious effort – it’s all done in a rush, intuitively – I don’t decide on things – “I think I’ll use this color here and move this over here and hold the brush this way” – it’s all down in one god-awful stream that sometimes ends well.  The painting is a result of everything you know, have thought, have done, have experienced – don’t worry if you feel you haven’t caught on to something from a class – you have caught on to everything – it’s in you someplace – the secret is forgetting the process of painting so that you can paint and i think secret for me and for everyone, is just to paint a lot and to be unconcerned about failures – because they really aren’t – they’re just bad paintings.