Last year, a friend of mine asked me if I could paint the Hawaiian names of two of her three daughters.  I always find name-painting to be a privilege, especially when I know there are deep, sentimental meanings to them.  Typically, Hawaiian names are this way, which is what I love about them.  My friend told me the full stories of the situations surrounding each girl, and how they came upon her name.  Little details of the story helps me decide on colors, themes, style.

The Hawaiian name of my friend’s eldest daughter is Kahulalimakapunawaiokalani, meaning, “the shimmering light on the living water.”  I don’t have process photos, unfortunately.  I wanted to capture the image of hope coming upon and calming a dark and somewhat tumultuous water.  The color orange is like a symbol of joy and thanksgiving.

Her second daughter’s name is Keahonuiokaolialoha, which means “the patience of a loving kindness.”  To be honest, this one was a little bit more difficult conceptually, because I wanted to incorporate details of her name’s backstory without being too narrative (after all, I wasn’t sure how much my friend wanted shared – these are pieces they’ll keep for their own future families).

My thoughts for this piece was to incorporate a sparrow, which, in Christianity, usually symbolizes God’s care and compassion.  I also wanted the concept of feeding and giving, as a sign of compassion.

I chose the color purple because, as a secondary color, means a combining of two colors, red and blue – such is a reflection of two parts becoming a whole.  So this is how it turned out:

And there you have it!
Custom names.  done.

the other night i asked my brother saidski to teach me how to do watercolor.  truth is, i’ve never officially learned how to do watercolor apart from those 16-color crayola sets; and even then, i did it while working in special ed, helping my kids do their projects.  so he tells me to start with simple shapes that we could use as swatches.

i started with a little circle… and it went from swatch to doodle to fullblown sketch!

and the finished product:

there you go.
you’d think i’d do watercolors sooner… i’m such a minimalist!!

aloha.
xo

okay okay.  so i didn’t succeed at the 30-day challenge.

correction: i did the lists, but i didn’t make it pretty, and eventually i had to make a list of my priorities, and the challenge wasn’t high enough up there. too bad.  maybe the blog would be so lucky if i decided to frill up those pages in later days :)

in the meanwhile, i still managed to be creative….

here’s a piece i did for opia’s blackbook:

you know i support the ART of graffiti, but i don’t do that jazz ;)

i do what i can.

xo