Finally Sunshine

It was a long two weeks of rain and no flying until today.  A glorious day began with seeing my breathe and mid 40s when I got to the field, and ended about 5 hours later with around 60F.  Wind was light the whole time from the north, so short takeoff and landing on the N/S runway was the norm with my SNAFU.  Flew it 5 times and had a ball with the usual variety of stuff.  Did more rolling circles for practice today, and they are getting easier on this plane.  Lots of the guys came out today due to the long spell of rain...they were chomping at the bit to get out too...Bob R, Al, Mike, Joe, Steve, Anthony, Quang, Bruce, Brandon, Jer and me.  We had other members there too who did not fly...Bill, Don Z, Charlie, and Dick.  It was a great day.

Verdant Koolau's

I think this Koolau painting is the best of the four I painted in the last couple weeks...for my own taste.  I finally got the feel that I want for this subject, sort of rich and velvety, on my fourth try.  On this particular effort, I prepped the canvas the same with black gesso (fully dried) followed by liquid clear.  My method changed after that wherein I daubed on the ridges with three different fan brushes, following some faint ridge lines I made with a felt pen after the liquid clear.  That looked a bit rough so I then blended the daubing out with a small flat brush.  That basically softened, smoothed and blended all the ridge lines for a soft and rich effect.  I added highlights on some ridges, added extra black/green in some valleys, for the contrasts I wanted.

Banana leaves are fun and easy.  The secret to getting them to stand out is to add pthalo green to some of the shades of sap green, cad yellow, white, and red.  Not all, as some of the greens should appear duller while some should pop.  Also, I tried to not mix the colors too much because banana leaves have lots of variations among leaves, and within each leaf.  I used a stiff fan brush to make the leaves.

I love oil painting but after doing 6 paintings in 3 weeks, I think I am due for a short rest.

Flight Log: 03/24 + 03/25/2012

Forgot to make an entry yesterday after flying the Stinger II three times.  Jer brought his Stinger 40 and we had fun making passes together.  Today I flew ALONE as nobody was there.  As I drove in, Mike and Dick were driving out.  I flew the Toledo Special three times today.  2nd flight started with a deadstick after 15 seconds of flight.  After some adjustments to the rather touchy needle valve, the plane flew fine again for 2 more full flights. With a pretty good crosswind from the South, it was challenging but fun to practice landings from the west, but all landings were fine.  The flying was good...the TS seemed real groovy even with the wind.  Played with tight low circles over the field, and quite a bit of inverted flight.  A good day.

Koolau Glory

The technique for this Koolau painting worked better than the first one.  Because of the black gesso base, with liquid clear over it, there is less mud created when I lay down the ridges.  This allows the greens to stay brighter too, so the overall painting is brighter and richer.  I am getting the hang of creating the ridges better, from studying their structure longer, and simply by painting them over and over.  I created a little more variation in the sky with Indian Yellow in the lower sky and right side, and by throwing a lavendar cloud in there too.  The mountain on the left somehow came out great again.  Overall I like the whole painting more than the first one.

Ok, a day later, I made some mods after discussions with my in-house fine arts expert...my dear wife Sandy.  I played down the dark valleys between the ridges on the left side of the range.  Added dark color to the bottom left corner, and redid some of the grasses for better depth and interest.  Also scraped off the banana trees in the bottom right, added black background, and put new banana leaves back in.  Here is the pic:

Small changes can make great impacts!

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.

Diamond Head Tranquility

I've no idea why, but this painting somehow came out of my brush today effortlessly.  First of all, sister Sue wanted a painting of Diamond Head, but she did not want the one I already did because she wants DH to be brown and green like it is most of the time.  My first painting has DH all light green.  So I had my orders, haha. Things just worked out.

Did the sky first like always.  Used pthalo blue on top, and just a smidge of alizarin crimson from horizon up, to make a faint blush.  Blended in between to a light lavendar.  Used the small stiff fan brush for clouds when normally I use the 1" or 2" full flat brushes.  Tried to be really random in cloud strokes.  I think I got rewarded with a very loose and natural sky.

Did Diamond Head next.  Just varied brown with white first to get ridges at the top of the mountain.  Then used shades of sap green for the lower half of the mountain, extending the ridges down.  Finally used sap green with black and brown to create the tree and shrub line at the bottom of DH.

Sue likes lighter blue oceans, so I mixed a little white with pthalo blue for the base of the top half of the ocean.  Bottom half of the ocean to the shoreline is pthalo green, but blended by strokes all over the top and bottom halves.  Decided to make more foam and splashes, and less of the rolling crest of the wave, and I am very pleased with it.  I think it looks more natural than the waves I have been making.

The sand is a mix of yellow ochre with the sienna and van dyke browns, with some white tossed in.  By blending the strokes with the water right at the shoreline, the sand gets darker near the water, as it should be!  I like that effect.  I used the small palette knife and a combo of liquid white and titanium white to make the foam lines at the shore and on the sand.  Blended the knife scrapes out with the soft fan brush.  Oh boy, I like the results.

I am extremely pleased, so much so that I decided not to add trees and rocks, to preserve the tranquil and smooth feeling I accidentally created.  Thank you Bob Ross.

UPDATE several hours later:  After looking at the painting, I detected a greenish tinge to the sand, which just ain't right.  It hurt to do it, but I scraped off the foam from the beach, recoated and blended the beach to be more yellow ochre, less green.  I decided then to add some rocks after putting new foam lines in.  Came out okay, but I was more pleased with the original foamy patterns.  Still, I think the rocks add more interest and tie the painting down better.  Sandy likes the rocks, so that helps!

Back in the Saddle!

It was really, really GREAT to paint again after the layoff of 6 weeks.  Today I painted Chinaman's Hat Island, which is just offshore from Kualoa Beach Park, Oahu.  Using a combination of a photo I found online, and one that J sent me for Chuck, I exercised a LOT of artistic license to create my own impression of the beautiful setting.  I imitated a similar background to the one in the photo I found, used the island's coloration from Chuck's photo, and enlarged the beach in the foreground per Sue's expressed desire.  Also tried to make the water with more white in it as she wanted.  All in all, I am totally happy with the painting...I had my doubts about being able to create it easily after the longish layoff.  Ahhhh, Bob Ross is an angel, and I am enjoying the Joy of Painting with his guidance.