Seabury Hall Jacaranda, Makawao, Maui, Hawaii

Seabury Jacaranda 5-7-8 #951
Not counting the day before that I finished the drawing in charcoal and it started to rain. I didn't like the low view from sitting in the side door of my van.
Day 1, 10:00 start, end 3:00
The panel is 1/8" hot pressed ampersand masionite.
The day before yesterday I put 4 layers of gesso starting with a layer thinned 50/50 (my whole squirt bottle is thinned 50-50), I alternate the direction of the stroke (a 2" foam brush Made in USA and sanded it with 180 grit wet-dry sandpaper. I sanded each layer to get a smooth final surface. To me that's important.
Each coat gets thinner by lessing the amount of gesso and adding water with my spray bottle.
The drawing was done from my van's steering wheel, my easel, with charcoal. It has to be to stand up to me washing down the whole panel when the acrylic lines are dry.

I'm doing a second painting of another jacaranda tree in front of the Makawao Post Office but it starts at 12:00 so I skipped today.
The charcoal drawing is first, on a smooth gessoed panel.

I finished the charcoal and ink in one day, I usually don't shoot a separate photo of both the charcoal and the acrylic drawing.

I went over the finished drawing with a thin line, blue acrylic and Liquitex's painting medium, it's as thin as water but very tough.

That was the end of day one. The best brush for the job is a very long haired sable, Isabey 318 Martre Kolinski Extra.

Today is 5/9/08. It is now 1:40 PM
This is day 2, I got more then 50% covered, I'm glad I moved into the van, beats beats yesterday's rain. It a bright sunny day, I tried to catch the underlying lighter colors that I could use for highlights.

5-10-8
I got 2 hours in instead of 3 before the rains came. I didn't want to add any cloud covered colors in so I quit.

Day 4, 5-11-8
Working on the flowers.

Day 5, 5-12-8
The day didn't start off so good, while pulling into my reserved parking spot someone else was there and I hit their tail light trying to get close to "my painting spot"
A couple of minutes later the owner came, it took an hour out of my painting day :(

Day 6, 5-15-8
I feel much better today and got a lot finished. I got here at 8:15 instead on 9:00 because I'm sure of the time now. That means I can leave at 11:00 instead of 12:00 and go home and make some lunch instead of going straight to my 12:00 painting. The tree is starting to get some form to it. The inside back of the tree is in shadow, that will make the foreground stand out.

5-25-8 the painting is basically finished but before I put on the final finish of water soluble poly I want to look at the scene one more time. And check out another tree in the area.

7-9-8, That took awhile. The school went on break, I worked on a new package of the Real Color Wheel for sale, found out that they were clearing oil in the 17th century with lavender so that project took a month. Removing the yellow from linseed oil.