Komo Mai I Palekaiko
I have been dying to paint a mural on the bare white walls in our hallway for months now. If there's one thing that drives me crazy its white walls. It's so drab, and just screams for a punch of colour lol. Well, my insanity drove me to ask my super if I was allowed to paint a mural on the walls. He said that he didn't care, but that he'd check with the owner just to be sure. I patiently waited a few days, and one day when Matt picked me up he told me that Norm said I was allowed to paint, as long as we paint over it before we move. SCORE!! So what were my big plans for this oh-so-bare white wall? Well a Hawaiian beach of course!I started my journey back into the world of Murals on Saturday morning. I painted for a few hours in the morning, completing the sky. Or so I thought. I wasn't thrilled with it, I could see too many brush strokes, and it just didn't scream "sky" to me. I decided to take a risk and sponge paint the sky. Well, it worked! I mixed blues and whites and made it look like a sky...or at least more like a sky than it did before lol.
I find the same problem happened with the ocean. I knew how I wanted it done because I had done a small painting of the exact picture I was doing in a large scale on the wall. I would use that painting for reference, but my scale is a little off. I got the right idea, it's just not quite what I wanted it to be. But, as is the typical problem with me, what I see in my head isn't always what comes out on the paper or canvas, or in this case, wall. Either way, I had fun. Saturday night I finished the sky and moved on to plotting how I would paint the ocean.
Sunday morning was the morning of my early birthday party. I had some time to waste before family started showing up so I grabbed my paints and got to work. Today's task was the ocean. I used a gradient technique with the colour, making the water darker near the horizon and lighter near the shore. It didn't turn out too bad. I was having trouble with the waves, and fixed it the best I could. They turned out pretty good considering the trouble I had getting it "right".....
Next was the beach. That was the easy part. I knew exactly what to do with that. Same as the tree. That was easy peasey....the part I was looking forward to the most was the palm tree and the leaves. I love doing the leaves. It's tedious, and yet strangely satisfying. The last finishing touch was the wooden sign stuck in the sand that said "Komo Mai I Palekaiko", which means "Welcome to Paradise" in Hawaiian. I had Matt do some research for me to figure out what Welcome to Paradise was in Hawaiian....he got me the closest he could find. He said the exact translation would be "You are welcome to Paradise"....but it was close enough lol.
Aaaand I'm having trouble with the Blogger pictures.....so I can't post the pics! Sheesh!!! This has been happening to me a lot lately....so if you'd like to see a picture, you can leave a comment, or email me and I'll send it to you. What a scam lol.
Sara
-Who really dislikes blogger sometimes.
posted by Sara @ 7:43 a.m.
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