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Dennis Wilson, Artist
My class with Dennis began with picking out a 14 in by 18 in. canvas and placing it on the wood easle at the proper height. Dennis set up his easle next to mine and pinned my picture of the double peaked Island known as the Mokes of Kailua onto his easle.
Next Dennis explained that picking a horizon line is important in that it defines the depth perspective of the picture. I decided I wanted about 40% sky, 50% ocean and 10% beach. So I drew a dark blue line a little above half way up on my painting. Here Dennis stressed the water horizon should be level and straight as in true life. While drawing the sky water horizon I put in a outline of the mokes towards the left of the canvas. Next I drew in my shoreline and first it was just a corner of the front of the scene but I later drew it all the way across the front. Dennis placed a dot a little left of the upper center of his picture and drew lines radiating out like a pie towards the corner of his painting. He explained this was the vanishing point and that the lines could be used as a guide to give proper perspective to objects placed in the painting. For example, a bird in the bottom of the canvas would be bigger than a bird close to the vanishing point. Placing a piece of cardboard on a small table, we next squeezed out our paint for the sky. I used two shades of blue, white, and purple. With a 3/4 inch wide brush Dennis started working the different colors into his canvas with regular short vertical brush strokes. I used a 1/2 inch brush and longer horizontal sweeps. Soon I had the sky, a dark blue with two stormy cumulus clouds being driven by a southern breeze. Sitting back, I decided I did not like my long horizontal brush style. So I got out a small pointed brush and I tapped the drying paint like a drum. I did this by holding the brush in my left and with the bristles up at about two o'clock and I drummed over the entire sky. This seemed to appease me as the colors came together in a finer grain, and Dennis mumbled something about Van Gogh. Clouds took life with a blob of white mixed with blue. In a cloud like manner they seemed to have a life of their own and had to be reined in as they threatened to take over the whole day. Now the islands beckoned out and the dark purple gave them depth and shadow on the sun starved backs. The water horizon took on a darker tone where it met the sky. The islands landed splashes of yellow and green appearing like spring had been wet. The islands caught my attention as black lava rock jutted out around the shore of the island and shadows caught in the valley. Another pallet took colors of green and turquoise and white to produce the sea. Here I went with shorter vertical stokes of the brush. I brought the bright green ocean right up to the shores of the island as the waves pitched back to sea in turmoil. In layers the water paled out and then the reef reflected blues thru the waters close to shore. The sands filled in fast with brown, tan and yellow as a naupaka plant took root and a strange tree wiggled it's roots right down by the water. Now, the white cloud paint decided to form into a shore break and leapt high to crash asunder. As Dennis wrapped up, a strange long red sailing canoe appeared on the horizon, the moana, the deep ocean, where the rain clouds tossed the water and the sky was dark with trepidation. I could faintly see a honu sketched on the sail canvas, as a few boobies swept across the reef. I was done......
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