Tough Challenge!

This was a very tough subject to paint.  Andy and Sue want paintings of the Koolau range in Kaneohe.  I have done the Koolau's once before and was not satisfied.  Guess what?  I am still not satisfied.  This second attempt came out better than the first, but it was a struggle that leaves me wanting to do it differently and better still.

First things first...it took me a while to find a good model to create my own painting from.  It turns out that Sandy and I watched Descendants the other day, and towards the end there was a great scene of the Koolau range, so I paused and snapped some photos of it.  Then on the Internet, I found a painting from a very similar viewing point.  Putting the two together, I came up with this painting.  It is not meant to be an accurate representation of the all the ridges on the mountains.  I just wanted to capture and emulate the feel.

The sky went on the canvas very easily and I thought I was on a roll.  The mountains were next and the outline was easy, but laying down the colors and ridges was difficult, so much so that I completed scraped off the mountains after I was done the first time.  I was using a combination of palette knife, brush strokes, and brush daubing to create the ridges and texture.  It just did not work on top of the liquid white, then almost black base I laid down before the shades of green.  Anyway, after the first try was scraped off, I tried again with almost the same technique, and it came out ok, but not great. The banana leaves were last to go on, and were surprisingly easy to do.

On my next attempt, I shall lay a base down like I use for the night time seascapes...liquid clear over dried black gesso.   Then I will apply the ridges using the daubing technique just like creating grass fields.  Maybe it will work, maybe not, but it is worth another try.