Morning in Makaua Valley
It rained so heavily last night I wondered if I was driving through a hurricane. This morning I woke up to two waterfalls.
One, and the second is just outside of the right edge of the photo.
I love waterfall season
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Tags: Makaua Valley, waterfall
Categories : Hawaiian
Welcome 2018
1 01 2018Welcome 2018, studio fans. Wishing you peace, a lot of hope, and more love this new year.
View from the studio near the end of 2017. The waterfall started from the mega rainfall we had on the island.
In midtown Manhattan, a couple takes a selfie. Remember to LOVE.
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Tags: love, New Year message, peacock, sculpture, waterfall
Categories : Hawaiian, Memoir, Travel
Remaking an oil painting
11 09 2011As an oil painter I’m often asked, “How long does it take to finish a painting?” In the same vein artists will remind each other, “You have to know when to stop.” We like to avoid overworking a piece.
My “Clouds Lifting Over Lanihuli” demonstrates these points. First is a photo of the painting mid-way, in the field. On a clear day, there are no waterfalls in the scene, but just after a big rain when the clouds lift, there they are! To paint en plein air I headed to this place to study the scene when it was raining, time after time. I took this snapshot from the trunk of my hatchback where I’d taken shelter.
In the field, in the rain
I wanted so much to finish the painting. Below is what I published, i.e., what I thought was ready for market, a few weeks ago. Oils take a long time to dry—up to six months before they can be varnished. In the meantime I can look at a painting every day. As I kept staring at this piece (it’s staged above the TV cabinet) something bothered me. It wasn’t finished.
Not quite finished
I decided to correct the areas of the painting that were “wrong.” In a representative piece, although it is impressionistic (I label my style as “impressionistic representationalism”) I want to paint a scene so that it looks logical.
To really finish and complete this painting, I did three things:
1) I added pigment to the center clouds area to hide the waterfall behind it.
2) I widened the same center waterfall at the bottom because it is closer to the viewer (and so should appear larger).
3) In addition, by very very carefully scraping with the long edge of a palette knife, I knocked down some objectionable relief areas I originally painted of the mountain ridges at the top and touched up the clouds to make them softer and smoother looking.
“Clouds Lifting Over Lanihuli” looks better now. I hope you agree!
Finished: "Clouds Lifting Over Lanihuli," 16" x 20" oil on canvas
Copyright 2011 Rebekah Luke
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Tags: Hawaiian, Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden, Koolau Mountains, Lanihuli, painting, painting lesson, waterfall
Categories : Fine Art, Hawaiian, Travel
Clouds lifting over Lanihuli
5 08 2011I wonder if it is true that in olden times the waterfalls of windward Oahu ran all the time. Olden times meaning before water was diverted to the Ewa plain for sugar cane and land development. At the present intersection of Kahekili and Likelike highways, while waiting at a red light, a rain storm typical of our wet season had just stopped and the clouds lifted to reveal a spectacular scene of the Koolau mountains. I was on my way to Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden at Luluku and made up my mind to hold the vision in my memory so I could paint it. For in just a few quarters of an hour the sun came out again and the waterfalls disappeared.
"Clouds Lifting Over Lanihuli" 16" x 20" Oil on Canvas (unfinished)
UPDATE, September 11, 2011: As you will see in my 9/11/2011 post, I have made some changes to this painting, and I think you may like the finished work better. Thanks for visiting Rebekah’s Studio.
Copyright 2011 Rebekah Luke
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Tags: Hawaii, Hoomaluhia Botanical Garden, Koolau, Koolau Mountains, Lanihuli, Oahu, oil painting, waterfall
Categories : Fine Art, Hawaiian, Travel
Waterfalls and the wet season
13 01 2011I can see three waterfalls from the studio this morning when normally there are none. The stream is running fiercely when normally it is dry. It’s ho‘oilo, the wet season, all right!
The lightning flashed as I drove home from a meeting in Kahana Valley last night. I covered Alice Brown with a blanket to minimize the agitation she experiences from loud thunder. DH and I battened down the hatches.
What was most irritating was a sudden bloom of mosquitos, just when I was about to fall asleep for the night. I don’t know where they came from—with all the water, could be anywhere—but we were under attack! Ack! After DH appeared with the insecticide in the bedroom, Alice Brown and I took a sleeping bag and moved to the sofa downstairs. The price of paradise.
It’s my painting day, and the worse of the inclement weather is supposed to have passed and moved down the island chain, so I’m thinking of heading out. Then again . . .
Deep in the valley—a double falls
When this third falls runs, it means there's a lot of water coming down on Oahu
Looking downstream from the studio
Copyright 2011 Rebekah Luke
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Tags: Alice Brown, Hawaii, Hawaiian Islands, Makaua, mosquitos, Oahu, waterfall, Wet season
Categories : About me, Hawaiian
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