Na Pali, meaning “The Cliffs” in Hawaiian, is a 17-mile stretch of rugged coastline located on the northwest side of Kauai. It is this beautiful stretch of earth that my dear husband I went backpacking on. Here the dramatic colors are muted by clouds, the whole scene was greyed down.
Sunset on Niihau
Niihau Island is located 18 miles from the island of Kauai across the often-times rough Kaulakahi Channel. The oldest of the inhabited Hawaiian islands, Niihau is also the least changed by modern progress. The Niihauans fish and hunt for their main staples of food, with their diet supplemented by supplies brought in by air and sea by the owners of the island. The residents of Niihau still hunt with ropes and knives and fish with spears and nets. Niihau is called the forbidden Island, and the place where time stands still. Niihau was clearly visible along the horizon as I painted this sunset.
Banyan Town
This is the perfect town for those who are willing to imagine it. There are many paths into the interior, and plenty of nooks and crannies to assign purposes to. It is the kind of place gnome and fairy legends are made from.
HANAKAPI’AI SUNSET
I managed to paint only one of the many cairns on this beach. This is the first beach on the Kalalau trail, it is very rocky and the surf is rough…so the rocks are wonderfully smooth. Previous hikers have stacked many, many rock cairns on this beach. If you are a hiker you know that a stack of rocks on a trail is called a cairn, and it symbolizes that you are to head that direction on a trail. To find many of them together, is not only impressive, given a tremendous surf, but inspiring and encouraging.
Black Sand Sunset
There are many different kinds of beaches…they all have their perks. The gulf coast of Texas might not win a beauty contest, but the sand builds the best castles. The beaches of Cuba have meters and meters of shallow water after the waves break, which make them perfect for kiddie swimming. Rocky beaches can have the most wonderful water because the sand doesn’t mix in the tide and muddy the colors. In my opinion, black sand beaches have the most wonderful sunsets. The water rests on the beach after the tide comes in like a mirror, reflecting whatever is happening in the sky. You reach this particular beach by walking through an Ironwood Pine forest. The Ironwood pine is unique in my experience, it’s needles droop downward in the most beautiful, dream like way, and its cones are teeny tiny, about the size of a marble rolled into more of a pine cone shape.
As an artist, the forest and the black sand make for an easy dark to make an interesting composition this time of day. I love sunsets, you have to work fast or light changes, so it allows for a quick, energetic study. I almost missed this sunset, the more dramatic colors were before I set up.
Wake up! Wake up!
The roosters remind me of children on Christmas morning, they are so excited it is ALMOST day that they want to share it with everyone. Note I said ALMOST day. I did some research as to why there are so many roosters in Kauai. Here is what I learned: 1. the chickens have no predators except the occasional feral cat or house dog, all the other islands have a mongoose that keeps their populations in check, 2. Hurricane Iniki (1992) destroyed some chicken farms blowing the chickens out onto the island, and 3. they were fighting cocks (1800s) that were released into the wild because they were female, or injured. The last reason may explain why they are perhaps the most handsome of all the chickens I have seen in my life.
Cock a doodle doo! Get up and hit the trails, it is time…or it least it might be by the time you have made coffee and put on sunscreen, so why not get up anyway?
A Walk in the Woods
If you have not read Bill Bryson’s “A Walk in the Woods,” let me recommend it now. It is perhaps the funniest book I have ever read, and I wonder if we are headed on our hike with equal measures of poor planning. I am packing today, tomorrow night, my dear husband and I will sleep on the trail! We probably camp and hike more than the average person, but we haven’t headed into the wilderness with every thing we need for survival on our backs much since we had children. So we have laughed as we dusted off our decades old supplies. We decided to adopt a hybrid approach between the new movement of ultra light backpacking, and the old standard approach, thus ensuring our packs will weigh a ton, but we will still be sleeping in a bag liner, and using a stuff sac filled with dirty socks as a pillow! I sawed the handle off my toothbrush, so I could take a paint brush, so if I can still lift my arms at the end of the days, I will try to do some studies.
¿cómo amaneció usted?
Buenos días, ¿cómo amaneció usted?
Good morning, how did the sun rise upon you?
Can you consider it plein air painting, if you paint through a window? We do. My youngest and I love to greet the day before dawn, and her easel is perfectly positioned to paint the sunrise, next to an east facing window. I switched the light on to take her photo, but we painted in the dim light and quiet of dawn, she at her easel, and I, set up in the windowsill.
Sand dunes sketch box
Painting plein air in the wind is tricky. I finally found a system that worked well….instead of setting up an easel which is apt to flip in a gust of wind, I sat with a little sketch box in my lap and worked on a 5″x7″ pieced of sanded paper securely taped down.
The sky allowed for an interesting study in color this afternoon. Above the dunes it was a bright, rich, almost-cobalt blue; above the water, the same sky looked almost grey compared to the deep blue-green ocean.
Fetch a pail of water
I love watching children create work. The ocean was a deep dark cerulean. Beautiful.
