Kelly

This is a portrait of fellow Cammie, Kelly.  I drew this last year at the cabins.

I do like how this portrait is rendered. The red under his cheeks and in the hat looks great with the overlay on top of them. I also like the gray in the portrait.

"Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better."

~ Andre Gide

Student 4

So I am trying to finish up the half finished oil paintings in my house.

This is another of the paintings of students.

This painting took a lot longer then I would have wanted. His shirt took a lot of time to complete because of the stripes. I really like how I rendered the air tank next to him in this picture and the reflections in it.

"If you have anything really valuable to contribute to the world 

it will come through the expression of your own personality,

 that single spark of divinity that sets you off 

and makes you different from every other living creature." 

~ Bruce Barton

Student on a Chair

I was going through an old sketchbook and found this drawing in the back of it. It really jumped out at me for a number of reasons.

First, it was a simple sketch book which I remember purchasing because it was relatively cheap, less then 5 dollars. It has the Hungry Little Caterpillar on it. I then apparently went through the trouble of  toning pages in it. Then with all this prep work I drew in it with black ink; which seems really weird and a waste of all that work. 

I also was apparently in the mood to do a watercolor and only had this book. I also was working with the three color watercolor method, so that means I didn't buy my travel watercolor set yet.

It is a interesting snapshot of me as a painter last year.

I really like this drawing. It is of a student I worked with in the weeks between Thanksgiving and last December. I have done other pictures of him. It is an interesting pose too; it is amazing he held it so long that I could draw it. 

I really like the shape of the shadows on the wall. I also really like the use of the watercolor as an accent to the burnt sienna watercolor pencil. I may have to do a few more sketches like this.

"Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors."

~ Joseph Addison

Student Drawings IV

More of my drawings of students... 

Above is one of my favorite ink drawings that I have done. I have known this student for a while.  There is a really neat flow to this drawing.

His dad has a silk screening set up and also is an Manoa Art graduate. So there may be T-shirts of this drawing in the works. I'd like that.

I have drawn and painted his student before. I wanted to draw him with his shaved head.

 

"A school should not be a preparation for life. A school should be life."

~ Elbert Hubbard

2012 Koolau - Kualoa Beach Park

These watercolors done at Kualoa Beach Park. I did them in the same trip as these. 

The sunlight was fading and I wanted to start the drive home. As I was walking back to the car I was awestruck by the way the light was hitting the mountain. It looked so blue against the gray sky. I sat at a traffic barricade next to my car and quickly sketched out these two paintings.

I am rather happy with this painting now. For a while, it remained a half finished sketch in watercolor. There were some moments where I thought of abandoning it, I really didn't like it. Mainly because I really messed up the shape of the mountain. 

It is a little darker then I would have liked it. That is more of a by product of the multiple layers of paint on this one.

Before I got back in my car I did a quick contour line drawing of the mountain. The dim light obscured all the ridges of the mountains.  There was just a strong shape of the mountains against the sky.

I really like what the paint is doing in this painting. The star-bursts from where the watercolor pooled on the page look really sharp. I was pretty lucky with them as they can be a very fickle thing.

"Watercolor is like life.

 Better get it right the first time – you don't get a second chance!" 

~Sergei Bongart

Monotype Portrait 2012 - Sarah

This is the second of this group of Monotypes that I have created as portraits of my friends. These are fun for me to do.

This is Sarah, my good  friend Justin's sister. She is also a teacher, herb grower, waterpark enthusiast, and the only one capable of dragging our group out to Haunama Bay a couple time a year. Very resourceful woman.

This print came out very nicely. It's a pretty good likeness of Sarah, and the print is pretty crisp.

"Like a snowflake we are the beauty of one." 

~ Kathleen Arnason

HMoA Drawing Class 11/13/12 - Kat

The model for the drawing class was Kat. I had a pretty good night. 

Above is three 2-minute gestures with the second 20 minute pose of the night. There is a nice flow to the page.

I did a horizontal page mainly because it looks so much better on the site. I am noticing a real difference in the quality of my gesture drawings from pose 1 to pose 10. I take the first couple poses to get into the groove so the later poses and pages tend to look much better. That all being said, my only regret is I started the gesture drawings with the horizontal page

This is two 2-minute gestures, the two 5-minute drawings and a 10-minute pose of her torso. Kat has a really long slender torso, so it is a lot of fun to draw. I wanted to get more of the pose down, but there was some rough foreshortening in her thigh and arm.

I am on the fence on this drawing. Kat obviously had a rough time holding this pose.  There was a really pretty twist in her neck and lower torso. As the pose continued, she slowly untwisted. The end result was she slowly moved throughout the 20 minutes. I really tried to adapt to the variation in the pose but there are some details that are really noticeable to me. However, the guy who ran the class really liked this page and took a photo for the weekly newsletter.

The gesture drawing to the left is one of my favorite gestures in a while.

Last pose of the night was the reclining pose. I thought I did pretty good with it.

This life drawing class is on Monday at 7PM. It is located at the The Honolulu Museum of Art School, formerly the Academy Art Center at Linekona. There is a 10 dollar class fee.

Odd Fellow's Regalia

So this is a watercolor I did at the last ordeal session. Its of one of the of the members dressed in ordeal regalia. Overall I am unsure how successful this painting is. There are some really nice parts; I love how I rendered the helmet and the chair.

I wish I planned out the page better.  The feet running off the page is problematic. 

2012 Koolau - Mokoli'i

So last Tuesday was election day in the United States. To avoid being online constantly clicking the update button on the Huffington Post, I decided to drive around the island and go to the beach and paint.

Both these paintings are of Mokoli'i or Chinaman's Hat, because of its resemblance to a straw hat. The Hawaiian legend of this island deals with a giant lizard or Mo'o and a great Hawaiian warrior defeating it and throwing its tail into the water. The tail is the island of Mokoli'i.

This is at Kuoloa Beach Park. It was bright when I got there and by the end of the drawing session it was getting kind of cloudy. I think I captured the change in light pretty well.

My mom did a celebration of this special place on her website, dailycelebrations.com.

"Art is both the taking and giving of beauty; 

the turning out to the light the inner folds 

of the awareness of the spirit. 

It is the recreation on another plane 

of the realities of the world; 

the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men,

 and of all the inter-relations of these." 

~Ansel Adams

Monotype Portrait 2012 - Marc

So the next set of Monotypes I am working on is another set of monotype portraits of my friends. Last year's monotypes can be seen here. 

This new set, I want to do a little more then just faces. The Prints are smaller then the last set, but I want to see how much detail I can carve out of them.

This is the first one of this set. This is my friend Marc, our resident computer programmer, AIM enthusiast, video game aficionado and Orc named Kantolin. His favorite color is blue so thus blue is the dominate color.

He thought it a great idea to pose with a stuffed bear on his head. I though so too...