Creating an Ad

I have to design an ad for the Hilo Tribune Herald's special Merry Monarch edition. Cosette, Tuko, Gail and I will be showing work appealing to the massive swarm of hula fanatics that will grace our hometown next month. I scoured my files for relevant imagery and came up with these two design ideas. I think we are going to run the second one, which shows a detail from the Pride of Aloha murals. Can you tell I did a little photoshop in one corner, to hide some guys that were in the water pulling in a hukilau net?

Me Painting

I was painting down in Ho'okena, a lovely but very hot and sunny spot on the south Kona coast, when a very nice woman recognised me from having seen me painting in Puna. She offered to send me photos that she had taken of me, so here they are. Of course the painting I am working on is of my favorite Puna coastal scene at Mile 17.

Her name is Tarananda, and she has an awesome website regarding her tours of Hawai'i.

Guerrilla Signing at the Sheraton

Recently I allowed a Pictures Plus in-house designer to use a bunch of my images for a project at the newly redesigned Sheraton Keauhou. Friends who saw the installation complemented me on its magnitude but were surprised to see that the prints had been hung without my signature, which is of course a horror story to an artist. So when I visited Kona last week I took my paintbox into the hotel and spent a couple of hours signing almost every print (one was too high to reach.)









The hotel is spectacular and there are a lot of my prints hanging in the lobby and pool atrium. Some look really good but others look undersized and isolated on the enormous expanses of wallspace. Too bad they couldn't be printed at mural size! Or, better yet, too bad the hotel doesn't spring for some "real" art and hire me to do some original murals!!

Triptych Details

As I get closer to the finish of this project it gets harder to see the changes. Mostly just clarifying shapes and edges and adjusting overall color balance. The various plants I am including are indigenous to the coastal areas of Hawai'i, such as noni, naupaka, hinahina, kamani, loulu and hala. The awa plant is stretching it but I would think you might find it in some places.