Saturday, July 9, 2016

Mamane

watercolor, 5.5"x9.5" (SOLD)

I made two discoveries today. 

First, I can listen to dozens and dozens of Greek radio stations on my phone and when combined with my little Bose speaker in my right ear, I almost feel like I am in a Greek taverna sipping ouzo watching waves of the Aegean Sea lap its shores. 

Second, depending on whether I view the same file of this mamane painting on my mac or PC, the colors are way different! The colors should be slightly greener ... more sap green, less Payne's gray. Regardless, this painting leaves me chuckling to myself. Mamane leaflets aren't quite opposite (should have remembered this as I'm a botanist after all). Ooops! Still, I'm happy with it. I have a bit more tweaking to do but I'll leave it for awhile and finish it up with fresh eyes down the road.

Monday, July 4, 2016

Wet on wet


At this point, I think I need WAY more practice with wet on wet techniques. It's something that I admire most about watercolor artists ... to be loose and yet suggest a whole background scene ... something I admittedly suck at! I'm fighting (yeah, really, literally fighting) my tight tendencies. I haven't used any masking fluid so I'm trying to get around the mamane leaves and flowers. I found out quite quickly that I can't do wet on wet on the entire painting at once because it dries too fast so I'm painting in logical sections, which seems to be working. Catch 22 tho' because I lose the looseness I long for. So yes, I feel challenged ... but at the same time, I feel very much like I'm finding myself ... like I'm getting to meet the artist that's inside and this is our first introduction.

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Getting started


The Hawaiian flora is spectacular and I really don't have a good reason why I don't spend more time painting it. It really is a curious thing, especially because I have spent the majority of my life getting acquainted with some of the rarest plant species on Earth, Or, maybe in my mind it's just impossible to replicate that kind of beauty in a static medium ... or I haven't yet figured how. So, I'll give it a try and do my best to map out a painting of mamane (Sophora chrysophylla), a Hawaiian endemic plant that grows nearby. It's in the pea family so I'll have fun painting those yellow flowers and gnarly pods.

Now: With the wind blowing through the hapu`u (tree ferns, Cibotium glaucum) outside and Dax snoring at my feet, I can barely hear apapane chirping through my window. I'm feeling a little nervous because I haven't painted seriously in a long while. I just hope that mamane gods are with me.