Frans-Willem “FW” Hendriks
Championed by Edward and Sally Evans
Take a closer look at this magnificent Honu!
“My turtle, will be all about the Hawaiian Paniolo (Cowboy). A large herding scene will be on the Turtle main shell, with roping, reining, & branding. The belly, I will depict the original three Hawaiian Paniolo’s that went to Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo in 1908 (100 years ago). All of it will be extremely detailed art.” Frans
Artwork of Realism
Frans-Willem “FW” Hendriks is not your typical Hawaiian artist. He was classically trained as an Engineering Illustrator, and won numerous awards for his pencil and ink designs of aircraft. Mainly British Aerospace Aircraft Engines and Volvo Engine parts. Yet, when the switch was made to Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) in the engineering world, FW refused to give up his mechanical pencils and pens. Instead, he switched career goals, and started to deviate from straight, linear engineering lines, to the realm of loose, non-linear, expressive art lines.
He attended art school in Pittsburgh; were the opportunity came up to work for Movie & Animation studios. Yet he refused the opportunities; mainly because the job requirement involved learning and using computers. His reason was driven by his romanticism of the classical approach to Animation and Movie special effects.
So during the 90’s, FW did a lot of self study & learned quickly to broaden is abilities with the “if that guy can draw that, so can I” method. Learning, and watching others and their techniques; he quickly mastered them all.
Yet, he personally didn’t want his artwork to look like all the other artist and their art. FW wanted to be extremely expressive; yet have his high detail, that he loved and desired from the Engineering world.
FW’s unique award winning drawing style, rooted in engineering principles, always starts out with his mechanical pencil. From there he’ll lightly do his first sketch on watercolor paper. Then either enters the Charcoal realm or progresses to Color spectrum. Either technique requires adding layers of charcoal, carbon, colored pencil, pastels, watercolor, airbrush, etc; to get the desired affect. This technique, known as “Kipona”, gives his drawings a photographic appearance.
FW incorporates his love of animals, people and Hawaii into his artwork. Living on the Big Island, he has also found unlimited subjects by studying ranch life, both past and present.
With his very unique style & his eye capturing detail; his art will always be on the forefront of realism, here on the Big Island of Hawaii.
His artwork can be seen at Parker Ranch Visitor Center. You can also see his artwork year round at: Firehouse Gallery (HI), Roscar (TX) & his Private Gallery on the Big Island, Hawaii.
