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 11

© Ellen Blonder
I couldn't sleep last night, thinking about how tight this painting was becoming. At 4 AM, I started chalking in overlapping foliage to the right and in the foreground.

Kauai Painting-Day 10

© Ellen Blonder

Now it's getting fun, adding details: shredded traveler tree leaves, small palm on left, vine crawling up the big palm, rough mountain details. There's still a lot to fill in.

Kauai Painting-Day 9

© Ellen Blonder

The traveler tree in the left background was interfering with the palm leaves, so I repainted them roughly, lower on the branches. I finished the trunk of the palm, and I'm starting to chalk in details for some of the other foliage. There's still a long way to go, but I feel like this is finally starting to take shape.

Kauai Painting-Days 6 and 7

© Ellen Blonder

I've painted a traveler tree in the background and roughed in the bromeliad in the foreground, larger than before. Lots of issues to work out with the various greens.

Traveler Tree and Roosters

© Ellen Blonder

I'm fascinated by the traveler tree, with its leaves angling down in flat Vs to form the trunk. I once heard travelers could find water caught at the base of the leaves, giving the tree its name. The trees grow into magnificent fans, much larger in relation to a rooster in reality. I'm taking artistic license here.

Ever since Hurricane Iniki destroyed chicken cages, Kauai has hosted an ever-growing population of wild chickens. Since some of the original escapees were fighting cocks, their descendents are often quite impressive specimens.
I thought I'd add one to this recent painting, a 15 x 15 acrylic on canvas that I started painting during our most recent trip.

The flower is pink ginger.

I think I'll focus more on a rooster in my next painting. Here's my preliminary sketch based on a photo I took of a rooster strolling casually past Starbucks in Lihue.