Fiji is actually a collection of up to 300 islands located east of Australia in the South Pacific Ocean. Historically it was populated by a mix of indigenous and Polynesian peoples until the British established a colony for sugar plantations and other commodities. After about a century of British rule Fiji underwent civil unrest until becoming a legitimate democracy. The people retained an interest in many British pastimes like cricket and rugby. When I looked into the landscape of Fiji, there was a lot of long beaches and lush greenery. In fact, the foliage appeared to be greener than any other I had seen in my research of many countries. The water was also a deep turquoise unlike any other I had seen.
To capture these colours in the painting I used some phthalocyanine pigments, or phthalo for short. The phthalo pigments rose to prominence in the 20th century, and recently gained worldwide fame although not many people realize it. Phthalo blue (PB15:3) is used to dye medical masks, like the rectangular ones many people wore and continue to weak during the SARS-Cov2 pandemic. The colourant is so scarce now, one of the laboratory suppliers sent us tubes with a white cap instead of the customary blue cap due to lack of pigments on the market. Luckily I have enough phthalo blue paint for the rest of my life, it is a very strong pigment. In the trees, I used phthalo green (PG36) with some of the blue, and for the water I mostly used phthalo turquoise (PB16). These blue paints are so staining, they will turn the plastic palette a blue shade. So I have a special plastic piece just to mix these ones up without polluting the main palette.
For the Fiji painting, these paints were just the right amount of intensity to show the colour ideas. For the composition I made use of a curve linear (fish eye) perspective to show the vastness of the beach. Maybe next time I do a beach scene I will paint it from the perspective of a fish underwater!
World Inspired Landscapes: Fiji, watercolour 6 x 8" cold press, April 2022 (No. 2999b)
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