Personal Best: My Favorite Watercolors of 2012

This is a recap of my favorite watercolors from 2012.

Maybe I'm biased on the above watercolor, but it's one of my favorites.  It's of my dad at an Independent Order of Odd Fellows meeting and it is the first time I painted him. I like the looseness of the sketch and how the colors pooled in the shadows.

I am really proud of this one and the likeness. So much so I framed it and it's proudly displayed in my living room.

I do really enjoy doing candid from life sketches of strangers. I really think this is one of my best. Its of a college student studying at the Starbucks near my house.  As it was finals week, he stayed long enough. I had time to really plan out this sketch.

I worked in pencil first, then planned out the lights and darks. I then worked quickly and got most of this done in a half an hour.

There are so many things I like about this sketch. I love the white ear buds and how they look against the background. I love how the shadow on his computer came from a drying paint pool. I really like his backpack and the chair, how simple they appear, done in just a few brushstrokes, and still very defined they are.

This year I really started to regularly paint landscapes and this is one of my favorites. There is a stigma about painting landscapes in most artists minds for a lot of reasons. I really had to struggle a little to get over that feeling.

This is a view of Olomana from Olomana Community Park.. I used it later in a larger painting and was very happy with most of the elements of this watercolor. I love the puddle of red on the left corner that makes the mountains in the background.

Here is a painting of a stranger I painted while between films at the Honolulu International Film Festival. The man in the picture had been to a bunch of the same films we went to at the festival.

I really like the shadows of this picture. The blue gray shadow on his face and the difference between his face and his arms and legs. The purple shadow behind him also looks very good too.

The last of this collection of watercolors is another landscape. I like this because I really worked out a method of painting the mountains in this drawing that created a neat effect and worked well with watercolors.

Here in this watercolor I drew in two colors of ink: brown and red. I used the red to define the highlights and the brown ink to define the shadows. The effect is created especially with the green mountains is also really nice. The red ink makes the highlight areas bounce , while the brown ink blends and melts into the shadows.

The mountains here are the next ridge near my house. So there is that element of familiarity here.

"The only person you have to please, 

with your art, is yourself." 

~ Don Getz