Kauai Plants Sketch

© Ellen Blonder

These sketches are of the plants in front of our parking space at the Kauai Hindu Monastery, where we went to wait out a possible tsunami after evacuating our coastal place. I drew as we listened to updates on our car radio about the waves approaching each island on their way here. We were lucky that all ended well.

Charlie-Study 1

© Ellen Blonder

Winnie Lu, a friend and realtor here on Kauai, asked me to paint a portrait of her dog Charlie. He's all black, with ears that have a tendency to flip inside out. He also has boundless energy at age 2, so I'll work from a series of photographs that Winnie and I both took. This is my first pencil study; I'm trying to get a feel for what handsome Charlie's all about.

Kauai Painting-Final Final

© Ellen Blonder

Well, never say a painting's final until you've slept on it. I woke up still dissatisfied with the way the top half wasn't melding with the bottom half of the painting. The sky is now much darker at the top, and I've worked on the clouds. Took all day to paint it in between the palm leaves, but it was worth it--now it really feels finished.

Kauai Painting-Final

©Ellen Blonder

It's a rainy day today. I'll look at this again in the morning light. I'll see if I can take better shots of it when the sun comes out, but I think I'm done.

Kauai Painting-Day 18

© Ellen Blonder

This detailed shot shows where I'm finally getting to the anthuriums in the foreground; I will continue to work on them for another day. Once that's done, I can finally start refining and adding details elsewhere. The lower right corner was the most unfinished part of the painting.

Kauai Painting-Day 15

© Ellen Blonder

One of my friends was having trouble visualizing how big this painting was, so here's a photo of me working on it. The top photo shows details of the last few days' progress. Now that I'm having to get layers of green not to turn into a confused muddle, I'm doing a lot of repainting, lightening or darkening.

Kauai Painting-Day 12

© Ellen Blonder

The foreground is roughed in, along with the "bones" of the ferns. I added a banana plant and a couple of distant palms and a plant along the far edge of the path.