The Virtual Paintout - June Challenge.

This month's Virtual Paintout challenge was ultra-enjoyable for me - a trip to Hawaii. As usual, I found it difficult to choose a juicy scene to paint from mainly because the whole island is "juicy". In the end, I decided to move away from those swaying palms of the shoreline and find something more urban and dare I say it, mundane? I looked round some of the back alleys for graffiti and found nothing very inspiring or painterly, but with a bit of luck I alighted on a delightful mural outside an art school. Not too difficult to paint, but photographing that glossy black was a bit of a headache. I decided to replicate the linear work of the mural by painting the figure as a 'walking drawing'. Nearly pulled it off. Give yourself a treat and pop over to The Virtual Paintout challenge blog and look at all the marvellous paintings - they're an absolute treat this month!

"Art School Mural" - 12, S. Pauahi Street, Honolulu, Hawaii"
Oil on Gessoed Board - 12" x 12"

Scene painted from Google Maps with permission.

Link to scene is here.

Screen Shot of Actual Scene.

Asparagus II.

It's been ages since I posted anything on the blog, and ages since I painted. All sorts of things took over in my life, but yesterday and today I managed to finish the second of my 'Asparagus Series' if I dare call it that. It's not really 'finished' as there are a few areas that need correcting, but I cannot do any more to it without ruining it, but it's better than the first effort. I actually quite like it.

"Asparagus II"
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"

Asparagus 1.

This was another one of those "I daren't put this on my blog" paintings, but after a while, I decided to post it. I bought some beautiful bunches of asparagus last weekend and thought how magnificent they were as objects and had a wonderful half hour photographing them in all their glory. The photographs were so inspiring and dramatic, I thought painting them would be a pleasure. Not so. I am so out of practice with all my work, especially still lifes, so it is not surprising I struggled. I struggled mainly with colour. The values were very stark and dramatic and my usual fight to find the absolute match with the greens made this work challenging. I also found it almost impossible to match the exact colour of the brown wrapping paper they were placed on and this colour struggle went through four incarnations before I managed to get reasonably close. I have three other photographs of this beauteous vegetable, and I am not giving up on them. I have learned a lot about this and I am going to try some new techniques and processes for the other three. I'm nothing if not persistent!

"Asparagus I"
Oil on Canvas - 8" x 8"