The 1st blooming Jacaranda
happened in Kula,
UFO in photo and in painting, 2015

This is the drawing plus the lines of acrylic over the charcoal, the charcoal will get washed off tonight. The acrylic outlines are my grisaille value scale, light, medium and dark outlines.

Day 2, 4-3-15, With the sun or without, on the 1st I liked the light around 12 noon, I should arrive about 11am. I arrived at 10:30am. Tomorrow I'll set up the umbrella, the sun, when there is any, is too hot.

First the sky, everything gets painted over it. I used a 1" flat, mixed the main colors with ult. blue, bt. umber and white and started painting. Without sun = no retarder, with sun = retarder.

Second step, the color of the flowers as the samples. This jacaranda has 3 middle colors, red-purple, light purple and blue purple. I am going to catch a patch of sunlight on the yellow tree, it will quickly turn all green. It's also a jacaranda, a young one.

I stopped at 1:30pm, that's 3 hours painting and it's about 25% done. When I get to 100% I consider it half way finished. The light brown is the undercoating of a dormant plumera tree. The yellow tree is too warm, I should have put a yellow pale on the palette. The yellow patch of grass is transparent Indian yellow 'cause I didn't have the cad yellow pale on my palette..

Day 3, 4-4-15. Started at 11:11am, finished 2:23pm, that's 3 hours of painting, it's about 35% done. Forget the shade umbrella, it looks like after the bike path the grass has started, I should be able to drive my umbrella stake into the grass. No way, the grass is on top of the highway asphalt.

The colors for the flowers are all Liquitex, their the light & medium pre-made purples, purple, ult. blue and Thalo blue (cyan). Today the flowers started dropping off, I still have a few days to catch the road full of them in the morning. After the flowers are gone, green leaves take their place. This jacaranda is still all flowers.

Day 4, 4-5-15, 12pm to 3:30pm. 3.5 hours on location. It's hot and I forgot my sunscreen, a lot of people stopped by or honked today. I didn't get too much done, maybe it's 45% finished with the underpainting colors. Only the flowers have final paint on them. Two houses, the road, the guard-rail and the background haven't been touched yet. The flowers in the tree still have more filling in to do. It's taking awhile because I have to change colors for every group because of the warm left side and cool right side.
I may not go tomorrow, tonight I repainted my acrylic carrying case with gesso, after sanding it. I should put a coat of paint on it tomorrow.

Day 5, 4-7-15, I'm done sanding and painting my carrying case, I used water based white latex paint and I loved it. I'll give it a day to dry. A girl named Diane dropped off photos of the first day's painting.
12:30pm, It's raining a little here in Makawao, but it will probably be just right on location. Nope, it'a raining here too. I'll paint from in the van.. nope, I'm close to Kula Highway which is very busy and the van moves with each passing car and truck. I left my white paint in the carrying case. This is going to be a rough day. I also ran out of yellow green. It was raining so hard at 3:30 I couldn't see clearly. 1 to 4:30, 13 minutes home.

Day 6, 4-8-15, 12:20 to 4pm, 3 hours 40 minutes. It's been a beautiful day, I got a lot done but there is a lot more to go. Tomorrow I'll get to the branches and more of the behind-the-tree flowers, these foreground flowers are tough.. A tree has 3 parts, the foreground, the middle ground which includes the main wood, and the leaves in the back of the tree.
First I got shape outlined by measuring and drawing the foreground flower branches. Then started painting the foreground flowers, I havent got the warm to cool gradation in the flowers from one side of the tree to the other yet and I have to get better patterns on the warm side in front of the dark palm. It's going to be dark magenta against dark green, a nice complement. The palm on the left is a giant palm that will grow twice a tall as the jacaranda. Right now it's leaning on it.

Day 7, 4-9-15, 12Pm to 2:50Pm. Green and Purple with white make the mountains in the distance. I painted with an 1/8 inch round ferule, flat end brush. Today, only Utrich has it and it's synthetic, good though. I got the bigger branches painted in but none of the smaller ones and most of the foreground tree flowers. Today I got 11 RCW orders 4-9-15. No photo.

Day 8, 4-12-15, 12:30Pm to 3:30Pm. It was sunny, read hot, very windy, it blew my paint case over and the cars were relentless. I cringed when I heard a truck coming. I have to go back one more day and I don't want to. Most of the twig branches are on the tree now, the two houses need a lot of work, I want to raise the cloud's barometer level and I should have left the grassy area to the right alone.

4-13-15, It rained all day today. Tom Booth called, Friday he's having a barbecue so I'm going to paint for a few days. Maybe tomorrow will be a nice day, This painting, "1st Jacaranda in 2015", can use it.
4-14-15, Looks like rain. I'm packing for a few days in Nahiku, painting.

4-15-15, Sunday, rain again, 6:45Am, I put up the flag at dawn each day.
It rained until 12noon, I visited a friend Mike and went to paint at 2pm, I liked it, painted until 5pm and still liked it. I used to paint any 3 consecutive hours, now it's too hot at noon. The sun has been getting whiter for years, I've been complaining about it for at least 6 years. I changed my painting times to stop at 10-11am, 2pm is a great time to start an afternoon painting stopping at 5pm.

Today's painting got a lot done to it. The tree flowers are finished, the green middle ground is finished, 3 houses are done, I couldn't see the 3rd house too well. The only things to finished might be the orange tree, the guard rail and the street. No hurry, the tree is done. I went back on the 16th and the tree was gray and turning green, not bright purple. So the the limit is 15 days. The young yellow jacaranda on the right is almost all green, My jacaranda is finished, others are blooming. Then the rain came, for a month.

5-1-15, I'm still not happy with the street or railing, I'm sanding the street down again, I didn't like the sunlit street or my first no-sun street, it's too light and un-even. The railing had to be re-done also.

That is a flying UFO in the top left corner of the painting. It was there for a short time, then gone. A girl named Diane photographed it and me in the painting together.

Finished. Yes that's the painting below in the painting. The view from my seat to the top corners of the painting continues to the painting's view. They are the same.