The calendar says March, already. Yikes!! Where has the time gone?!With the summer art festival dates coming up sooner than I'd like, I realized I needed to paint some smaller sized paintings. I had a lot of fun going through all my photo references, and I finally settled on an image I took from our trip to Hawaii in December.
I drove into Poipu all by myself on one of our last days there. I was very familiar with the area, as we stayed there for 2 weeks on our first trip a few years back. This is part of the beach front at the Sheraton Kauai. Very beautiful. I love the dark lava rock jutting out into the ocean, and the gorgeous palm trees along the grassy bank. I did a quick drawing right on the watercolor paper, and then began putting down washes of color. I did the sky very quickly, and except for a few little additions of color, left it alone.
The water is very dark here, and I used French Ultramarine, with some turquoise added for that tropical water feel. The lava rocks I used Payne's Gray, some Sepia, and some other lighter touches of Burnt Umber for contrast. The palm trees I used a lot of Sap Green with Windsor Lemon and some Burnt Sienna. The trunks of the trees I used various browns and blues to give them some contrast. One of the worst things one can do is to use the same color for every tree trunk...same as for every rock or every leaf. Nature is more colorful than we think....and if you really look closely you can see so many color variations everywhere.
Back to work!!
