skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Have been doing my regular oil painting but wanted to shake things up a little. Did a limited palette study using only orange, blue, and white outdoors Friday, but no way to make any green colors so the trees came out like fall colors which don't fit here in Hawaii. Decided to go over the work with wax or encaustic with a stylus which I had done in the past. The result is below:
I also wanted to try some acrylics which I had but didn't use for a while either. In my many years of painting I've used almost every media before settling on oils but do like the fast drying of acrylics, especially here in Hawaii where they paint dries in minutes. I used an image I had of the Holei Sea Arch here on the Big Island. I like the contrast as the acrylics dries darker but you have to be careful not to make the whole image too dark.
Painted outdoors at the Old Airport Park and faced inland (mauka or uphill). This park has a nature trail with many plants maintained by volunteers and also a refuge for homeless cats, mongoose, and chickens. Here is a view where a rooster posed just for me. LOL.
I also had a request to do a larger abstract, emphasizing pink, yellow, and blue. I started out with more organic shapes but as I worked I moved more toward somewhat geometric shapes. I'm liking the movement in this work and if the requester doesn't like it, I'll do another one and keep this in my inventory. This is 24x36 inches.
Been tied up sightseeing with visitors so decided to do a small plein air this week with my group as wanted a work to finish in one session. This is 4x12 inches and came out well I think. This is the last of my small canvasses this size but I might stretch some more smaller ones as they are a fun format.This is a view of Kahaluu Beach, the south side. I've usually sat at the side and painted in the north facing direction so this was a reverse direction. The rest of our group was painting from in front of the pink house on the right.
Here are a few works done recently. These are square, long rectangle, and normal rectangle. I had a 12x12 frame so cut a board to fit but then had a 4x12 leftover piece so did a small oil sketch on that. Also painted over some older work I didn't like at 9x12, and 5x7, so 4 works, all a different size. Nothing like variety.
Worked a little larger again today at 11x14 and put a lot of detail into this one although still tried to keep it loose. This is Keauhou Bay near us and one of my favorite spots for a dip. Had dramatic clouds early on so put them into the sky before they blew away.
A friend of mine is an avid biker and posts photos of his adventures. I needed a break from sand and surf and sun so did a small painting of a lone biker among the Oregon haystack rocks and wide beaches. This is 5x7 so the biker is really small. LOL.
Here is a larger work than my recent plein air small pieces, done in the studio. I had an old 16x20 canvas stretched that had some lines of paint which still showed through when I gessoed over them so knew I had to paint thick to hide these lines. My first try at my normal style was OK but the lines still bothered me in spots, plus the painting lacked life. I decided to paint over it with a pointillist style borrowed from the 1880's French artists like Pisarro and Seurat, using small dots of paint all over. I may need to darken the dark areas a little but I like how it's coming so far.
This view is from the waterfront behind the Kona Inn downtown, looking north toward the extensive rockwalls there.
