H Is For Drawing Hawaii

Today the letter H is for drawing Hawaii.  I make no apologies for Hawaii being one of my favorite states, and I would live there part-time if I could afford it.  Here is one of my favorite drawings I have created of Hawaii, which is the view of Diamond Head from a boat.  It is actually based on a photograph that I took during a dinner cruise off Waikiki Beach in April of 2002.

Drawing of Diamond Head And Waikiki Beach
Drawing a picture of Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach is something I did back in 2010, but I decided I wanted to do this again.  My colored pencil drawing is based on a reference photograph I took during a dinner cruise of Honolulu back in April of 2002.  Unfortunately, I was not able to hike up to the top of Diamond Head during that trip, but I did get to view it from a distance.  Also, I have seen many of the amazing videos people have uploaded to YouTube of their hikes to the top of Diamond Head, so I just was inspired to create another illustration that captures the beauty of this locale.

 

The photo above is the reference photograph I used for my sketch.

 

Here I am beginning the outline sketch of Diamond Head and Waikiki Beach in the distance.  This drawing is based on a photograph I took form a dinner cruise back in April of 2002.

 

 

 

I am sketching gentle waves on the water off Waikiki Beach, and a couple of catamarans floating on these.  I decided to only add a couple, even though the original photograph contained several.

 

 

In the two photographs above I drew the palm trees on Waikiki Beach, and the buildings seen along the shoreline.

 

 

Above is a couple more videos showing the progress on the sketch of Waikiki Beach and Diamond Head in the distance.

 

The photograph above shows how I have sketched in more of the gentle waves on the water just off Waikiki Beach.

 

Above are a couple of videos I uploaded of how the Waikiki Beach sketch looked after I had added most of the details with the drawing pencil.

Here are several photographs illustrating how I colored in the sky with a deco blue, violet-blue, dark blue, light blue, and cream colored Prisma Color pencils. Lately I truly love the Prisma Color pencils because these are vivid and blend quite well, but also use Crayola and Rose Art colored pencils that I have in my art supplies.

In the colored pencil tutorial video above, I demonstrate how I layer the sienna brown and dark brown to create the shading on the peaks and canyons of Diamond Head.


 

In the photographs above the palm trees have been colored on to the drawing by using a combination of green, white, white, and cream colored pencils.

 

In the video above I am coloring in the hills adjacent to Diamond Head.

In this phase of the drawing I used various shades of blue blended together to achieve the gentle waves like the ones seen in the original photograph.

 

In this stage of the drawing I have almost finished coloring in all the waves.

 

Here is the completed drawing of Diamond Head and Waikiki, which I am admiring on the fridge for a bit.

 

This video illustrates what the finished drawing looks like, which I am going to frame and hang on my wall.