Sea House Restaurant Painting

Getting closer!

Sea House Painting

Underpainting of monstera leaf in indigo and prussian green. Glazed over with phalo green and sap green. I use drafting tape a lot to help control my lines and edges. It only works on clean white paper though. If you put drafting tape on painted paper, it leaks.

Sea House Restaurant Painting

Here are some new "in-progress" photos of the painting. 

Sea House Restaurant Painting

Thanks to Lynn Shue at the Village Gallery in Lahaina, I've been working on a very large, 42.5x70", watercolor for the Sea House Restaurant in Napili, Maui. I started with a trip to the Kahului Swap Meet where I just about bought out one of the flower growers! I took dozens of reference photos and ended up with this as a starting point:

From there, I copied and pasted a banana flower with tiny bananas on the stem, and a new protea to the bottom right over the existing protea so that it would show more. This is the result:

This photo has a little bit of everything as far as color and flower variety. Perfect!

Here are the first few photos I took of the painting in progress:

More to come!

Farmer's Market Flowers, Hawaii Style

I've been away from my blog for too long. Here's my latest painting in progress:

It's a big one, 38x56". When it's finished, it's going to it's new home in Boston, MA. I promised myself I wouldn't paint any more large paintings unless they had a home, and fortunately, this one is a commission. I've begun the underpainting of the shadow shapes with winsor violet, pthalo turquoise, indigo, and napthamide maroon.

Here's a close-up of the right corner. I've started putting in some of the foliage with prussian blue, sap green, and yellowish green. The big yellow area is quinacridone gold. I've also masked some areas where I want to preserve highlights.

Here's the whole painting so far. I have most of the underpainting in place, but couldn't resist starting some of the local color. I can only deal with delayed gratification for so long!

I've painted the reds with an underpainting of quinacridone gold. This painting is so big that my normal method of tipping the paper to move the paint on the paper is a challenge. I've been working with a plastic garbage bag covered by a hand towel sitting on top of the painting with all my palettes, brushes & water bucket sitting on top of it. Every time I need to tip the paper, I've got to move all the stuff off the painting (carefully!) and then put it all back when I'm ready to paint again. 

This is it for today. I'll post more tomorrow!

Arrival

This is the first step of my painting. I use cobalt blue and winsor violet as an underpainting for all of the shadow shapes in the petals. I tend to use the violet in the center of the flowers where there will eventually be a yellow color. The violet makes a beautiful shadow under yellow, avoiding the brown you can sometimes get when trying to create yellow shadows.

This is a close-up of the painting. After all of my shadow shapes are in place, I added some of my "triad grey" (aureolin, perm. rose, cobalt blue) to some of the shadows to give them a little more depth. I wet one petal at a time with clear water before I begin painting. From there, I begin overpainting the petals with perm. rose, quin. magenta, quin. gold, new gamboge, and winsor orange (red shade). Tipping the paper helps smooth the transitions between colors, and the water I painted on the petals "floats" the paint, allowing more movement.

I've finished the petals, and underpaint the buds and stems with winsor violet. I've used indigo to underpaint veins in the leaves, then overpainted with sap green.
The stems and buds are painted with pereylene violet and permanent rose. The winsor violet underpainting shows through, creating depth. My final step is to glaze over some of the lower stems with the triad grey to push them into the background. When you first apply this glaze, it looks pretty bad-- just give it time. As the grey dries it disappears, creating a subtle shadow.
I titled this painting "Arrival" 36" x 15". It was my first painting done while living here in Maui.

News from Maui!

My husband and I are spending the next six months in Maui. I'm planning on doing a LOT of painting, and have just joined Maui Hands, a wonderful art gallery. This is the view from my studio.

In February 2011, I will be participating in a brand new annual art event on Maui, called the Maui Open Studios. It is an exciting island-wide event of self-guided tours of artists studios and exhibitions taking place the first 3 weekends of February every year. I am one of over 100 artists who are participating in the inaugural event in 2011. The event includes a festive Opening Celebration and Preview Exhibition on Friday, February 4 at the Maui Tropical Plantation. There will be live music and a cash bar and artwork to preview from the participating artists. The Opening Celebration is followed by 3 weekends of artist open studios including mine. The event is entirely free for the public.

My event /show will be during Weekend #2 (Feb. 12-13) from 10am - 6pm on both days. Please check out my artist profile, samples of my work and my show details on the Maui Open Studios website at http://www.MauiOpenStudios.com Click on my name in the alphabetical listings in Weekend #2 to view my information.

I would appreciate it if you could share this information about my show with your friends and art lovers and I hope to see you then!

Aloha, Kathleen