KAILUA BEACH CANAL  – Painted in the style of André la Derain

It was highly educational to replicate this image by André Derain. I learned that, although he had some cool ideas about color and its use, he was a careless painter, thus getting muddy colors and sloppy sections.

I’m a smoother, and he was a dabber. It was really hard to give up smoothing for his dabs. And although I did at first, I ended up not liking his composition.

André Derain was a Fauvist, a rebel, who refused to paint things as they seemed – he applied color in places in what seem like willy-nilly fashion, but if you look carefully, it was more to separate sections off from each other. He painted shape and color, not light.

Above are the original image (left) and the one I tweaked to add the outrigger.

I love his colors but will probably never paint like this again. It gave me so much of a headache I didn’t complete the trees at the top!

KAILUA CANAL –
Original – acrylics on canvas – 20″ x 16″ – available