Saturday, July 10, 2010

Once in a Lifetime

Aloha to all,
We were fortunate enough to experience a truly unique, truly Hawaiian treat today ... we got to go to a special showing by the artist Wyland. If you haven't heard of him, he is the guy who paints the waterscapes on the sides of buildings. He is celebrating 50 years of painting by doing shows at all of his galleries and we visited the one in Honolulu/Waikiki a couple of months ago and fell into an opportunity to have him paint us a picture at the show. So here's a few pics from the evening ...

He started the evening with some updates on what he is doing in the world right now ... he is becoming a really big environmentalist and the Wyland Foundation does quite a bit for different issues concerning mainly ocean life, but now all endangered species. He quickly got down to the business of painting a picture during the show (not ours). Here is the transition from beginning to finished product.
He starts out with what he calls a 'ghost image' ...
he adds layers, and layers, and layers, of color ...
he adds highlights ...
some finishing touches ...
aaaaannnnnddddd ... voila ... finished!
The ease with which he did this was amazing. He truly has a gift ... he says it is all in his mind's eye. He also says he has a 'grid' in his mind over the picture so that no matter how big or small the medium, i.e. canvas or building, he paints the corrects size (anybody thinking of Mozart here!!).

Anyway, he then proceeded to do the commissioned paintings, there were 5 of them. He did it in a style he took from a Japanese art style. He has a book with about 120+ of these in it and we got to go through and pick what we wanted. He then painted it with us up front. L says the 'Whale Tail' is just 'Classic Wyland' and 'Classic Hawaii' so that's what we chose.
Starting out with the fluke ...
adding the other side ...
working in the tail ...
adding some personal touches (the original doesn't have the water) ...
the finised product and the gang. Unique Original, signed and dated. Pretty cool.

It was also his birthday yesterday so we sang Happy Birthday and got to share in some birthday cake. G took some time to ham it up ...
and then she just HAD to have a photo by the dolphin.
We topped the evening off with some dessert from CheeseCake Factory. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday nite. $$ - don't ask :|!

Other than that, life is good. B started marching band and they are going to Japan this year so Mr K is Mr Hard_ss and isn't letting them off for anything. She's also still doing gymnastics and is getting a little Muscle on her ... quite impressive. H is still doing horses and gets better all the time. (she doesn't know it but we may be leasing one and getting her and G some more saddle time). G got her eyes checked last week and is, as they say ... 'blind in one eye and can't see out of the other' ... actually almost literally. Her right eye is REALLY far sighted and her left eye has decided to just hang out and not develop. We are trying to train her eyes up with glasses but may need to go see a specialist ... we'll see. Otherwise she is our 2nd TomBoy and would rather spend her day outside in the dirt with the boys than anywhere else. L is hanging in there ... wishing summer was over so she could get back to her normal routine (beach by day, backyard couch by nite :)). I started another resident class, 5 this year, and they seem to be ok ... so I'm busy as crap ... AGAIN!!

Hope your having a great summer.
Aloha!!


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