| Day 1, 4-28-7
I'm using the Real Color Wheel and it's oppositions to make darks. My palette has refrigerator paper taped to it, oils don't sink in to it so it works well. First I studied the shadow colors, what was the main color, at 11:50 in the morning it was blue. I'll darken that with it's opposite, dark yellow, which is brown. That dark neutral has a blue/side or a brown/side. I needed some cyan in the mix so I added some cyan-red opposition. That made my darkest foreground shadow darks. Next my darkest greens. Yellow to yellow oxide with Thalo green Y/s.
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| Day 2, 4-29-7
To start, the colors were not dry and the day was cloudy not sunny. That means all the colors are different. The jacaranda is now blue not purple. It's Ok, on location you live with that sort of thing. Here is todays photo. day2photocoladj.tif Yesterday's start. origday1coladj.tif The painting at noon. origday2nooncoladj.tif 5:00, finished for the day. Today I used alkyd and turp, I want it dry tomorrow morning.  |
| Day 3, 4-30-7
Today was a good day, this isn't just a small painting.. it's a miniature. I'm surprised my eyes can still do it, even with my glasses on. I'll be 66 in 21 days. May 20th, but.. who's counting. I got a full 8 hours in today, and I thought this was faster. Well, maybe I'm getting slower.
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| Day 4, 5-1-6
I could have finished today but I'm enjoying it so much I want to do some small additions in the morning. What is different about this painting? The lightest next to the dark and darkest next to the light rule comes to mind. The whole top edge of the tree is silhouetted against the sky. This makes for some dramatic contrasts.
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| Day 5, 5-2-7
I messed up the signature area, scraped it down and repainted it with the base colors. It's 5:00 already, the sun is shining below the cloud cover so I can't add any new color. Today I repainted the larger trunks of the trees to match the cloud cover time of the painting. More work was done to the high contrast tops of the tree. The small branches below the higher flower bunches seem to blend together and only a few of the branches stand out. I tried to capture that effect. Tomorrow the bottom right 1/16th of the painting and on the left there are some tree trunks not painted in yet. I was having an alternator problem so I left for Lahaina to have it fixed.  |
| Day 6
Fixed in 24 hours, I'm back on location. It didn't take long to finish.  |
| Day 1, 5-4-7, 12:15
First I drew in the center line and where an object on the center line crossed the horizon line. After the chalk was finished I wiped it off leaving a slight line that I went over with a thin wash of acrylic. Then wet wiped the panel clean. The perfect brush is an Isabey 1 1/4 inch #6 Series 6318. This is a long pointed sable that holds a lot of paint and has a very fine point. I painted the sky white because when I'm blending the sky colors I don't want any tooth pull, I want it to be smooth, like a paint with oil in it.  |
| Day 2
It's about 50% covered. The yellow tree is turning green fast, just in the course of today it changed. Not all jacarandas start off yellow, maybe one in fifty. Some lose there leaves and bloom, one in a hundred, most just stay green and add the purple flowers. That is what made this view special, it having both a full blooming purple tree and a yellow leaf tree side by side. This image is at 3:00, I worked until 5 but forgot to photograph it.
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| Day 3
9:00 start. I learned something in the past year, mark the areas that are in the sun or in the shade. That way as the day goes along and the cloud come and go, you have an area to work in. I think the hill on the right will be in the sun.
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| Day 3
4:00 end of painting day. I started the white fixing, changing process. It takes two coats of white to get back to pure white.
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| Day 4, Monday, 5-7-7
9:00 AM, I added another pigment color, Raw Sienna. 12:50, I saw the front hill lit up for the first time, everything else was in shade. 1:15, this photo showing my 'white' work, in the foreground.
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| Day 4, end.
On the right side is my test to see if Green Gold's tint would be bright enough to use in the sunlit portion, it wasn't, I added Hansa Yellow Light to my palette. Because in acrylics I mix all my colors outside the box, on the top, my wet palette only needs a place to hold the paint. These colors will stay moist for two weeks, I spray the cloth ceiling of the box and the paint often.
I thought it was clever moving 15 feet to the left, the wire fence had equally spaced verticals and I thought everything would work out fine. I forgot about the road and how it would be effected. I took out the whole area and started over. I really didn't mind, I like the process of painting.  2:00, This is the end of the day, a tennis partner stopped by and I went to play with him. That's the best part of painting for the fun of it. Time doesn't matter, that much.. I did get the lines of the fence chalked in and some of the high contrast foliage climbing up the wires. Tomorrow I'll finish the foreground.  |
| Day 6, 5-9-7, 15x11 acrylic, Finished
All went well and I finished it today. It took the same amount of time as the 5.5x7.5 painting took. I don't think the yellow tree is a jacaranda anymore, it never turned purple. I couldn't get close enough to see the leaves to be sure.  |
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