The Sea House Painting- Finale!

I use drafting tape a lot to keep my lines straight. It works on clean white paper okay, but not on painted paper. If you use it on painted paper it leaks (sometimes it leaks on clean paper too unfortunately). It's important to pull it off right after you paint the line in case it has leaked. Not that you can fix it, but you can see the damage sooner. ; )

The pink heliconia on the upper right is now in. That big white area in the upper left is full of green leaves and an orange blob that isn't really identifiable. I've decided to add one more flower there to break up all the pinks. The new flower will be orange and yellow.

This is the new photo reference.

At this point I'm filling in the white spaces.

The protea down in the bottom right corner does not have shading on one side consistent with the rest of the flowers (I added it from another photo) so I will need to fix that.

The new heliconia on the left side is the one I added. I've been covering the painting with clear cellophane bags (you can see them above) to protect it from splashes. It's funny to see-- I feel like it's a surgical operation, with only the area I'm going to paint exposed. The cellophane bags work well because you can still see the rest of the painting. I set my water bucket and palettes right on top of the protected painting so that I don't have to reach several feet away.

This is the finished painting. I painted on 300 lb. Fabriano Artistico cold press paper which came on a roll. I used mainly Daniel Smith watercolors, a few Winsor Newton watercolors, and Escoda kolinsky brushes. I purchased the flowers at the Kahului Swap Meet. 

I also put grommets in the top of the paper so that I could hang it on a curtain rod in my studio when I needed it out of the way. This was very helpful, as the painting is 42.5x70", plus a few inches on all sides!

The painting will be hanging at the lovely Sea House Restaurant in Napili, Maui by the end of March. If there is a reception, I will post the information!

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.