Sketches, musings, and other stuff from my perspective. I’d love to hear from you (because I don’t know if anyone ever sees this) so please let me know if you’re out there.
Our wet Winter brought brilliant wildflowers to California in the Spring and I was delighted. While on my walks, I photographed the variety of colorful blooms and then went to the studio to paint.
Flower painting in my studioSizes ratios are not consistent hereSometimes it’s hard to identify the species, even with the Seek app.
Spotlight on Pride of Madiera
Pride of Madiera is an invasive species that thrives in NorCal coastal areas. The blossoms on this bush start as cone-headed shoots, which grow into a plethora of tiny purplish blue flowers, some with fuchsia hairs . The bushes can grow to be 20 feet tall.
This year, I pulled off one of the little buds to find that it was its own gem: an incredible curl of plant with tiny periwinkle colored flowers along with that fuchsia hair and buds. I was mesmerized and drew numerous studies of the flowers.
Pride of Madiera from a variety of distances and angles
Here are some photos of Pride of Madiera in action
Incredible, right?Some of the blossoms are pink, some are more on the white sideHillside surrounding the Robin Williams tunnel entry going into Marin County from the Golden Gate Bridge
When we go to Hilo, we don’t care if the weather’s wet because the view from our friend Suzanne’s house is incredible and we’re happy to just watch the surfers all day long. This trip, I was obsessed with capturing it.
Sure, we went snorkeling (which was fantastic) and even watched manta rays devour plankton (more on this later) but my focus was, and has continued to be, capturing the magic of Honoli’i. I wanted to create and blow up patterns and textures.
I started three paintings plein air and finished them using the photo above as reference.
Honoli’i, the first. ~21″x14″
I started another one very much like it, which I brought home and proceeded to work on further.
Honoli’i the second. 20.5″x14″
The first two are very similar and I didn’t achieve what I wanted so I continued pushing a more stylized version.
Honoli’i the third. 14″x11″ I overdid the clouds, I think.
But I still wasn’t totally happy with the results. I decided to further simplify in an ink drawing, adding aquarelle pencils.
Honoli’i the fourth. 10″x8″ I’m the body boarder next to the building.
This piece is much smaller than the rest and I endeavored to further push the stylization. I’m still learning how I want to paint scenes like this. Each situation is different and even though I’m having fun, it can be uncomfortable. Actually, it’s frustrating. The good news is that the opportunities are infinite.
I wasn’t as obsessed with the smaller paintings I created at Richardson Beach Park, where we watched a turtle nibble on seaweed for a half hour. The snorkeling was pretty great there too.
Richardson Beach Park
I painted two plein air pieces. It’s much easier and quicker to paint on a small piece of paper.
Richardson Beach Park version 1
I spent a lot of time thinking about how to paint water and used acrylic white on the above test. But finally realized that my stye isn’t photo realistic anyway so I can do it however I want to. It would still be good to know some techniques but for now, I’m okay with messing around.
Richardson Beach Park version 2
One day, we enjoyed the sublime beauty of Hapuna Wailea for snorkeling and sunset.
The critters in the water were splendiferous.
There were a bunch of these urchins, which I call Rusty Pencil uni.
And the sunset was brilliant.
After the beach, we drove to Keauhou, south of Kona, for a night snorkel with manta rays. The tour operators motor a short way into the harbor, set out long, thin rafts outfitted with lights shining down into the water and handles on the perimeter. Participants swim out and hang onto handles in the Super Hero Pose (with a noodle under our feet) to stay flat. Since the plankton is attracted to lights, the rays glided RIGHT UNDER US, like inches away (rather startling). They eat 20 pounds of plankton a day.
They reminded me of whales–they’re so HUGE
They came at us with these cavernous maws. There were around ten of the creatures, some of which were 12′ tip to tip. Yeah, it was exciting and unnerving.
The trip back over the saddle road was a kick, as we were fortunate to find this radio show on KHPR1, Blues from the Basement, which kept us rockin’ for the challenging drive. Thanks Jon Alan!
Just a few more doodles.
And mahalo Suzanne, Gabriella, Alex and Keaton for a sublime, sweet visit. A hui hou! Seia tatou toe feiloai!
I’ve been captivated by a neighbor’s garden where king protea are blooming. Whenever I pass by, I am drawn to the flowers like a bee to honey and I just gape at them. This has brought me to paint them, of course. Here’s the series I completed.
Most of these were created with potato and carrots to stamp shapes in watercolor, with brush embellishments. I got really into the stamping technique.
I was trying to get to the basic elements of the flower here. Thin line details were completed with watercolors in a dip pen.
This was the first one I did. Pent up desire to draw/paint these flowers just came out in one go.
When I can’t go out, I go in. And usually, that means making art.
I discovered the fabulous Esté MacLeod on Instagram and she quickly became my favorite artist on the platform. She starts with letters or numbers and turns them into beautiful paintings. When I saw that she was offering a free course on playing with shape and color, I was all over it.
The first part was to draw numbers 1 – 9 and turn those digits into leaves, real or imagined.
When I tried to think of ways to do this, I got stuck. But when I just let my pen move and got my head out of it, I ended up with some interesting patterns and shapes.
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The next step was to put them into more plant-like formations and paint them with watercolor. She encouraged the class to use a dip pen with the watercolor applied by using a brush as well as brush painting. I’d never used this method before and was delighted by the effect.
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The next step was to employ potato, carrot, toilet paper roll and other items found in the house, to create flower shapes and then embellish them. Once again, I had trouble because at first they all turned out looking the same and I kept thinking about how I could do it. But when I tried not to think and just moved my hand to draw and paint lines, curves and shapes, the results surprised and delighted me.
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I made this one for my mom since she LOVES flowers and today is Mother’s Day.
These were all my favorites. I will use them elsewhere, I’m sure.
The incredibly beautiful, serene Waipio ValleyWaipio Valley coastline. Looks like good surf. Heck, yeah!Plenty of these big ass tree ferns in VolcanoChillin’ in Kea’au. It was dark and I could barely see the paper while drawing/painting.All these guys sunning on the South Side.Love this flowerPau hana at the Seafood Tiki Bar. These guys just off from work. Celebrating aloha Friday. Had no supplies on me. Used the back of my Long’s receipt and the busboy’s pen.
Manali is a starting point to the Indian Himalayas in the state of Himachal Pradesh. We had heard that the best way to get there was to take an overnight bus from Delhi. We investigatedt other options but none of them much reduced the number of hours of travel. So, we flew from Jodhpur to Delhi and situated ourselves on the overnight bus.
The seats on the bus reclined and elevated our legs but there was no bathroom aboard. I dubbed the ride “the Kishkaville Express” because the last half of the trip, on rocky, unpaved mountain roads, bumped and jumped in the early morning. After 13+ hours, we arrived in Manali.
On the bus, we met Alaka and Dev, a friendly couple from Delhi, who told us about a local festival that was happening that day, the Manu Festival.
You can tell that Manali was probably a sleepy hamlet twenty years ago. Its beauty and location an all to familiar blessing and curse as it’s become a tourist haven of the north and jumping off point for mountaineering. Most of the visitors are Indian, coming for adventures and ganga, which is smoked pretty freely in the old section, despite being illegal. There are a myriad of outdoor outfitters lining the main road and over a hundred guest houses and hotels. During high season (late May and June) the traffic can be complete gridlock.
We stayed a few days in Manali and then took a car to Tosh in the Pavarti Valley.
I was awestruck by the views from Tosh. The stunning snow capped mountains in the distance and homes tucked into the steep hillsides reminded me of the picturesque villages of Nepal.
Although we had been told that it was “the best place to stay in Tosh” our guest house was a dirty dump. The transformer had gone out and we had no electricity while we stayed there (not the fault of the guest house).
The latch on our door needed oil. It squeaked loudly whenever we struggled to pulled it over to lock or unlock it, the bedding was soiled and the combination squat/sit toilet seat was loose. I don’t want to talk about the rest of the bathroom.
That said, our balcony had a wonderful view of the mountains and gave us a great vantage point for watching the comings and goings of the village.
From Tosh, we walked along the valley to the Waterfall Café, where the tables sit in the gushing flow.
Further on was Kulka, a tiny mountain “village” consisting of two guest houses, a small store, a babbling brook, grazing horses and a lovely high meadow with an awesome view. We would have loved to stay in Kulka.
The next day, we took a car, which dropped us off near Pulga, another village nearby. The road is still being built there so we backpacked in. On the way, we met some travelers who recommended we stay at the #capitalcafe, a new guest house with bamboo cottages (and electricity)! The place was SWEET as was the young owner, Chetan, who spent time with us and told us his story. It was a highlight for me to share my greeting cards with Chetan and his crew, who are all Nepalese. His cook recognized one of the places I’d drawn.
We took a hike in the dense forest there, passing a waterfall and a herd of cattle (right there on the path). To our surprise, we happened upon this shrine in the woods.
We wanted to stay another night there but had already made reservations at an Airbnb which was in Gargi
“Usually, when we have these global get-togethers, we take photos and nobody ever looks at them again. We have a great time and I want the team to remember the experience.” With this, Rob Brown, the head of Global Marketing and Design for BBVA asked me to capture the Global Product and Design team offsite in Dallas earlier this year.
I was only happy to comply. I sat in on a couple of days of meetings, sketched participants, took photos and created this composition. The piece was matted and printed at 11 x 17 as a memento for each of the attendees after the event.
The latch on our door needed oil. It squeaked loudly whenever we struggled to pulled it over to lock or unlock it, the bedding was soiled and the combination squat/sit toilet seat was loose. I don’t want to talk about the rest of the bathroom.
Suzine II 