Updates

 Had several unfortunate events recently. On March 2, the leader of the West Hawaii Plein Air Group, Richard Rochkovsky, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. I volunteered to take over the group to be sure it continued to exist in its current form. We are maintaining our schedule and activities on the facebook group PaintingOutThere. I'm also posting our schedule on my website, artbigisland.com. Working together the group can continue to thrive. 

Then, I traveled to Las Vegas, first mainland trip in over three years, to visit with relatives, and returned with a case of covid. Four of us in the group caught the virus for the first time. Luckily no one became seriously ill and all are recovered. 

Around all this we continued painting. Here are a few recent works from our local outings.

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Busy, busy

 Been busy in the new year with painting another batch of miniatures, 2x2 to 4x4 for the gallery where I've been selling double digits a month. Fun to make these although had to find some new doll house frames as my first batch of 100 are almost all gone now. 

Also been painting outdoors as usual. Here are a few recent works. 

Top one is at Pine Trees Beach, facing inland to the golf course area. I tried to show the stepped land up to the houses at the top of the hill. 

Below is Beach 69, one of our most scenic spots, in a brightly colored work.

Closer to home is Pahoehoe park, a mile from my home, on a cloudy day. 

This is the Hala Tree at Honl's beach. It's my third time painting this tree and I think I finally got it right!

Keauhou Bay is my favorite swimming "hole" 2 miles from home. The hotel in the background is now the Outrigger. 

Small Works for Holiday Sales

 Painted 22 new small works for the Blue Sea Artisans Gallery for holiday sales. These 2x2 to 4x4 works are popular for gifts and for tourists to take home easily. They some with a little wooden easel plus a hook on the back so can be displayed on the easel or hung on a wall. 

Panoramic Paintings

 I stretched a series of 10x20 canvasses this summer and have been taking them to our various sites for outdoor painting. Still have five left so look for more to come. 

 Top is a view from the north end of Pine Trees beach, a new location for us as usually we turned south for the beach view. North are more volcanic rocks but people still enjoy the water here. 

This is a view from the Energy Lab beach, a location at which I've done many works now.

A view of the cliff above Hookena Beach, with the old rock pier in front. 

One of my favorite view at Honokohau Park, site of turtle sunning, and the old canoe Hale.

Another view at Hookena, this time turned away from the mountain and toward the beach and trees.

My newest work at Pine Trees Beach but this time facing south to the surfer beach and the camping tents among the trees.

Small works, 5x7

I have a lot of 5x7 frames at home so decided to do a project of creating some paintings to fit them. Here are the results. Honokohau beach, two Magoon's beach scenes, Magic Sands with all the people enjoying the waves, another Magoon's, the Glassbottom boat parked at Honokohau Harbor, and last, Pahoehoe Park. These are fun little studio paintings done from photos I can finish in one session. I'll have them framed at the Blue Sea Artisans Gallery soon. 

Two studies

These are basically the same scene, night and day. These two variations were from an exercise in Mitch Albala's new book, "The Landscape Painter's Workshop". The point was to use value, or lightness and darkness, to drive the painting in the top one, and to use color in the second as the main attribute. The top painting is mostly dark values, about 6-9 on a 10 point scale. The colorful version is about 2-6 on the value scale. Which one speaks to you the most? These are both 8 by 8 inches in size.

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Latest Work

Some new work as I have been busy outdoors and in the studio. Top is 11x14 work from beautiful Magoon's Beach, facing south. This an extract from a larger painting I did last year.   

Next is an 8x8 inch exercise in analogous color from a new book: The Landscape Painter's Workbook, by Mitch Albala. I used orange through violet on the color wheel. 

 

This is an 11x14 done at Hookena Beach, one of our favorite painting spots as there many views to paint. I've done this direction several times and here I zoomed in on the background and emphasized the sand and water and activity at the beach. 

Last, this is my usual 8x10 outdoors at Kahaluu Beach close to my home. We often paint under the shade of the pavilion and this time I faced out and south toward the edge of the beach. I wanted the bright red of the building and the variety of the rocks showing at lower tide. The waves were strong so I put  them in at  the right edge. Higher tide would cover the rocks in the foreground almost completely.