I’ve finally gotten two compositional sketches for my next potential painting together. That business with the tsunami put a hold on things; we who dwell near the sea were directly confronted with how uncertain a place that this world (even in the best and most beautiful of places ) can be at times. A sobering experience, from which I hope I’ve gained an appreciation of just how blessed we are.
Which is all the more reason to seize the day. Believe it or not, during those hours when none of us in Hawai’i knew what was going to actually occur, I found myself thinking of the courageous musicians on board the Titanic who, accepting their fate, performed chamber music on deck as she took on water…art revealing it’s significance at a point when mankind’s other devices had failed dramatically.
Of the two rough compositional sketches I’ve completed, I’m showing the one I will pursue. I’ve learned over the painful years to never commence without the preliminary drawings and groundwork to figure out where I’m heading. Thanks to all the old painters I’ve been privileged to study…they left behind a pretty clear map of what to do if one is willing to take the time. That topic gets into a whole “plein air” rant that I’m storing up for a future disgorgement.
Back to the positive:
Kailua beach pencil sketch, 9 x 12″
This painting will be a color piece. By this, I mean that the delight of the painting is primarily in the color and the subsequent values and shapes. The color is really exquisite here when the light breaks through, with the dusky orange-greens and strange violet-grays that the Ironwood trees and their shadows have at this time of day, mid morning. Cool pinks pop about. There’s an aquamarine blue/green in the water that is extraordinary, especially as it’s placed against the warm-colored light sand.
I’m constantly amazed at the elegance and sophistication of God’s color choices. Combinations of colors reveal themselves that would never occur to me if I hadn’t pursued them through direct observation. Lately (meaning the last couple years!) a blue/violet/orange thing has been happening…who would have thought of it?
But perhaps most exciting to me are that there are also wonderful opportunities for dramatic paint handling and a staccato impressionist light/shade treatment that will reveal forms and movement. As a composition, it is very rich in that regard, and I hope that I can avoid allowing the freshness of the vision to get bogged down in “issues”, other than capturing a joyous and dramatic slice of life. That’s the point, entirely.
If the weather and light are cooperative, I plan to start tomorrow morning and see if I can lay the painting in. I have my eye on an oil-primed linen 22 x 28″ canvas that’s been “aging” in the studio for many months. It’s on heavy stretcher bars, which I may replace later…they’re a bit much for that size.
We’ll have to see what tomorrow brings.
