You come to Hawaii to spend time on the beach and in the ocean, and we did a lot of that. The sea is warm here and we swam only there, not in the pool which had too many people. I did a little beach sketching, but mostly played in the ocean or strummed on my ukulele. Above, that’s the view from the beach at Waikiki looking out towards Diamond Head, that big mountain in the distance. We hiked to the top of that, a fun morning, along with thousands of other people. The views were amazing from up there, when people moved their heads. I didn’t sketch on that hike, there wasn’t the room. There was room at the beach; I drew this one on the final morning there, stood in the shade of a palm tree. I did more of those clouds with the white gouache paint.

There were lots of those clouds in the distance at Waimanalo Beach, on the Windward side of the island. We loved that beach, it wasn’t too busy and the views across Waimanalo bay were, well, the reason we came to Hawaii. The colours of the ocean were so bright, a brilliant turquoise, probably caused by the sand being kicked up so much by the ocean current. I splashed about in the waves, which were a bit stronger than in Waikiki, and when I went underwater to look around in my goggles you couldn’t see much ahead of you.  I sat in the shade to paint the scene when I got out, really just trying to record the colours on paper. Those clouds in the distance, they rolled in and burned off before arriving at the shore. Somewhere out there beyond view is Molokai. I’ve not been there though my urban sketcher friend Rita Sabler was invited there to do reportage sketching at Kalaupapa couple of years ago. The clouds were pretty dark back over there, but not the sort to threaten a lovely day.

After this we went to Kailua, to get some of our favourite shave ice at the Island Snow store. We were looking forward to that for months, and it didn’t disappoint.