Orlando Temple, sand painting, year 2011.
size 20×16 unframed
This is the drawing of the Orlando Temple that I made back in year 2007. I am using it for this project.
The process is still the same. I place the tracing paper on top of the polyphane paper and transfer the drawing onto it. My grand son Jaden has done a couple of sand paintings using the same system.
I have already spend a few hours on it, which took the span of a few weeks. But all the grass area and trees are done. I have to use sand that have colors in them and if it is used after I use the white sand, some of that dark sand will show in the white and it will look dirty. Of course, all the sand I use are natural sands. None have been dyed.
I used the green sands from Mahaena, a beach in Tahiti, and some from New-Zealand. My mom gave me a bottle of dark brown sand one christmas that came from Mangareva Island. I also used the beautiful, black shiny, a little coarse sand from the Trou Souffleur in Tahiti. I use that sand a lot. I like it. The color is a very deep, intense black. The red sands are from Marina Beach in Florida, and from Lake Powell Utah. My daughter, Shantal, went on vacation last year and brought me some brown, goldish sand from South Carolina, a lake I think. There is a lot of gold flakes in it. It’s real cool to look at. The highlights on the palm trees trunk are done with sand that came from Mitirapa, another beach in Tahiti.
Okay, now I am ready for the next phase.
I started with the steeple of the temple, and used gold sand from Tureia, a polynesian island. It’s a very deep yellow sand that comes from the kind of crushed shells that make up the sand of that beach, some yellow seashells. I am told that some shells are only found on a island, not all islands, that’s why sands can be so different.
The next phase now is to do the walls and I have to use white sand, or different shades of whites sands. I was born in New-Caledonia and maman gave me some sands from there. I am using a creamy color for some of the shading which comes from l’isle des Pins New-Caledonia. Another white sand came from New-Zealand also.
It is so exciting when the painting seem to come along real good.
The window panes are done. A friend gave me a light grey colored sand from Myrtle Beach South Carolina which I used for the glass in the windows. The sand itself has the look of glass, as if the sand was made of pieces of gems and not of rocks.
The sky is in. I put in the clouds first using sand from a beach from Tahiti, Paea at PK18. Jim and I went swimming there. It is a beautiful spot. PK18 is a marker that shows distance, 18 kilometers. PK 0 is located at the other end of the island, at Teahuopoo precisely. That beach is famous and reputated for its surfing. The last part for the sky, the sand used was from Fakarava, an atoll in the Tuamotu Islands.
The white sand that is used around the window panes came from Noumea New-Caledonia. It is so white it almost looks like salt.
This is the very last step. When this last bit of sand is swept off, the painting will be done.
This is the painting I did of the Orlando Temple back in 2007. I used different sand for shadings and got a different result.
And this is today, year 2011, using different sands for shadings and getting a different result.