MAEVA’S PAINTING

 

Maeva was not born yet, but I wanted to do something for her , a painting that when she looked at it, she would recognize some of her “fetii” or family members.  Vaite, her mom, is there, before she was pregnant and after, her dad Jake is present too, both of them with their quirks and funny habits.

First of all I had to decide on a place.  I chose a beach in Moorea. My family and I spend a couple times on that beach.  Tahiti is in the background.

So it was decided, Tahiti will be in the background.

Each individual drawing had to be picked, repositioned and resized so none would be bigger or smaller than others.  At first I thought that this painting would take me a week at the most.  Was I wrong.  The pencil drawings took 2 to 3 weeks alone, and sometimes in the middle of the actual painting, I had to change the drawing. 

Again I went back to the stack of pictures taken on our trips to Tahiti for inspiration.We had just arrived in Tahiti the night before, this is the morning, with Hans looking around. We were getting ready to leave for Moorea.

I’ve always loved that picture of Viengxay, my girl-friend from Laos.  She had on her hat that she had brought back from china, and what with the bright colors of her towel, it is a nice picture…I had to find a way to incorporate everything that I liked.

Yah!  Butt sticking in the air… that’s Vaite alright!

Titaua, my brother’s wife picking up some shells.  She had on a real pretty green pareo. The kids were doing the same thing. The sun was coming down. Everything was peaceful and quiet.

We were walking on the back of the property, looking for the spot the owner had told us it would be worth it to see, and we came about this tree with the big rock and the chickens and ducks feeding on coconuts.  I had to look twice… coconuts?  It was cool!

All these ideas and more I had gathered on a myriad of tracing papers. They had to be put together now and form a whole picture thatwould make sense.

I was done with Tahiti as the background and had added a canoe on the water with the reef and a little fare (house) on the left.  At that point, I had realized, that this painting was going to take me a lot more than three or four days.

I had blocked out the places where I wanted the people to be added in the future and in the background I  had done Jean, my brother, standing up with my brother Moe, playing in the water. Each was done using a shading method to give impressions of thickness, values which added resemblance.  I think, they both resembled my brothers.  I was happy with the result, but two persons took me about one to two hours to do. Oh well, it was for Maeva, so like always, I had to do my very best, and this was going to be…

Poor Jim, I took over his area, his computer desk, got my stuff allover his desk, pushed his stuffs around. There was sketches and paint tubes and brushes and water bowls on his desk for a long time.  The easel was blocking the way with the canvas, to the backyard.  I had to use the computer for each image that I chose so the values and colors and skin tones, etc… etc… would be right.  Through out the whole time, Jim did not complain once.

Isn’t it cool?  I was halfway there!  I  was even able to insert a drawing of Buddy, our little dog in it.  I am sure that Maeva will meet Buddy one day.  I think I put Vaite in this three times, in the front, aside with Jake her fiance, by the beach, showing off her round tummy, and again from the back in a purple pareo with Jaden and Olivia.  Each time I looked at the picture I smiled. I was happy.

There is Olivia holding Zeus with Buddy watching, and Olympian watching not too far and Titaua further back walking her little dog.  All the animals that we love are present.

It is almost done!

DONE!

Now we can play the game.  “Maeva, where is mama?  Where is dada?  Where is…”