Working Again?

Please excuse the extra blog post at an unexpected time. Almost everything is almost working again on my site.

You can subscribe to the blog using your email address and the Subscribe button (although, if you are reading this, you have probably already done so.)

You can subscribe to my occasional emailed newsletter on the right hand side, with your email, name, and Sign Up button.

The For Sale pages and Shopping Cart work in some browsers and not for others:  Safari and Google Chrome, yes; but not for Firefox.

If you are having trouble with the Shopping Cart, you can try using the Refresh Button (a semi-circle with an arrow on the end up in the navigation bar) or you can clear your cache, which in some browsers is called “Clear History”. I sound as if I know what I am talking about, but I am simply parroting what my Web Guru has told me. I also don’t know if any of this applies to non-Mac, to iPads or to smart phones.

Short of spending a zillion dollars, there isn’t a solution. Right now I don’t have a zillion dollars, and if I did, it would be spent on a trip to Ireland. (I really really like my ’96 Accord with 215,000 miles, but thank you for your concern about the best way for me to spend a zillion dollars, should it ever enter my life.)

Here is a pencil drawing of water to take the edge off of this boring post.

Heart of Agriculture

That is an apt title for today – a nod to both Valentine’s Day and the World Ag Expo’s opening day in the title of my latest coloring book.

This coloring book was published in partnership with the Tulare County Farm Bureau, a delightful group of people to work with (in spite of their rejection of pomegranates).



There is a tiny heart hidden in every picture, even this one:

This is my favorite:

 

And this might be the most fun to color:

The coloring book for grownups has 20 colorable pages and is $15 including sales tax. (If the Paypal button charges you tax, I will send you a refund.) If you prefer to pay with a check, I accept those in the mail to Cabinart, PO Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271. If you like to cheat a little, you might be able to print these pages from the blog, but I don’t know how and am not going to instruct you in this.

The For Sale pages work now, unless you are using Firefox for your browser. (I think that is the only one that doesn’t work with my site.) Here is a link to the Heart of Agriculture page. Tap or click here, depending on your device.

 

Little Victories

Life is hard, full of obstacles, difficulties, problems to solve, and hassles. But, sometimes there are victories along the way that lighten our loads and lift our spirits. Last week I experienced a few of those little victories in my business of art.

  1. The scanner now works with the new laptop!!
  2. The pencil drawing that was full of mistakes is now corrected because contrary to my memory, I did NOT use Fixatif on it!
  3. I finished 3 oil paintings!
  4. The latest coloring book arrived!

These all require exclamation points because I am exclaiming over the thrill of victory.

The mistakes were all little things, negligence and carelessness as a result of haste. My readers and students had fun figuring out what was wrong. I don’t dislike this picture any more.

Tomorrow I’ll show you the new coloring book, and the next day 3 new oil paintings. New? Finished since you last viewed them.

Repainting Mineral King and Prudence

Happy Birthday, Gordon!!

The big Mineral King mural in Exeter has faded.

Yellow fades the quickest, so gray becomes purple, tan becomes gray which then fades to lavender, and green becomes blue.

The mural colors were like this when I finished it after 52 days of painting in 2009.

Now the colors look this way:

It is time to refresh the greens and grays, and when it stops raining, I will do that. The sky and the insets are fine, as are the farthest snow-covered peaks. (Maybe – ever heard of “purple mountain majesty”?)

Meanwhile, I am preparing to repaint Mineral King by painting Mineral King in oil. Painting a mural is very attention-getting, and the process will bring attention to Mineral King. It is prudent to have paintings ready for eager customers; if I had been born in the 1600s, perhaps my name would have been Prudence.

It was prudence that caused me to photograph these through the window rather than going into the painting workshop, which doubles as the Bengal-beast’s safe place. I didn’t want to awaken the sleeping Samson by going into his territory.

Trading Water for Walnuts

This week I’ve set aside my current obsession of drawing water and begun a commissioned piece of a walnut grove.

This has involved several sketches, beginning with the page of the walnut grove as it appears in the coloring book, Heart of Ag for the Tulare County Farm Bureau (NOW AVAILABLE – WILL POST TO FOR SALE PAGE WHEN IT IS REPAIRED!)

This was a starting place. More ideas were requested and delivered. This is part of the business of art, the sorting out of details for commissioned work.

The response was, “This looks like a generic walnut grove, not like ours.” Hmmm, is there anything unique about your walnut grove? A barn? A creek? A canal, a ditch, a view? 

No.

I made a trip to the grove and found a teensy distinction between the customer’s grove and any other Joe Farmer’s grove. I can’t tell you what it is, because this is going to be a surprise for someone.

I can show you the beginning stages of the drawing.

 

Whole Lotta Oak Grove Bridges

Whole lotta bridges going on around here. All the Oak Grove Bridge, of course. 2 paintings, a calendar, 2 photos.

Samson was busy with other things (thank you, GE for babysitting) so I tackled the bridge again. This time I started over, working from back to front and top to bottom. This layering and layering and layering is called “glazing” in Artspeak.

The lower right corner is a mess. Real life is very messy. Most scenery is messed up with sticks, dried stuff, dead branches. . . and we don’t notice because we look past it to the good parts.

You can see the lower right edge of the photo is a mess, a tangled mess.

It isn’t finished here because I just flat don’t know what to do.

So, for now I’ll stop and just think about all the versions and how I’ve handled this corner in previous renditions.

Because I’m feeling more confident about the 11×14 commissioned oil painting of the Oak Grove Bridge, I decided to pull out the 24×30″ version from last year. I tackled it the same way – starting over in the farthest places, working forward.

Just like with murals, the larger, the easier. 

Weird.

Particularly Challenging Challenge

Oil painting is a real challenge at times. Getting the colors right in addition to the darks, lights, textures, shapes and proportions, along with seeing what is really there instead of what I think might be there plus adding and subtracting whatever is necessary to enhance the scene . . . it is just hard.

Then along comes a new challenge. This oil painting commission of the Oak Grove Bridge may take longer than any other previous oil painting. Let the photos suffice, although none were taken while claws and teeth were attached to my painting (or photographing) hand. In all the wrestling, a button got pushed on the camera that made the colors more vivid than normal. I’m surprised nothing got broken or accidentally painted or dropped.

While this Bengal bitey-boy-beast, AKA Samson, took a rest, I was able to work on the rocks beneath the bridge a bit, and also located the posts on the bridge itself. The customers didn’t give me a deadline, and they say, “No hurry” each time I see them. 

Good thing.

Trail Guy Blazes the Way to Mineral King

Before Trail Guy was Trail Guy, he was Road Guy in Sequoia National Park. One of his specialties was opening the Mineral King Road in the spring. 

This week someone from the Park asked if he’d help make the road passable for snow mobiles so people could get up there to do a snow survey. This is when they measure the depth of the snow and figure out the water content, some pretty helpful information.

He went again 2 days later because he wanted to check on the cabins, something they were unable to do on the first trip because there were so many downed trees to deal with.

I didn’t go along because while he is retired, I am not. I’ll just do my best to explain his photos, and if I get stuff wrong, he’ll correct me and I’ll fix it.

Sawtooth as it looked on the way in to Mineral King
This is our Cushman Trackster on the most dangerous stretch of road, “The Bluffs”
A cabin in Faculty Flat
Another cabin in Faculty Flat, buried in snow
This might be the second most photographed cabin because it is so picturesque, perched above Cold Springs Campground.
View from the top of Endurance Grade (also sometimes called Coral Hill)
The Honeymoon Cabin with Little Florence (also known as West Florence) in the distance, which is the left side of Farewell Gap.
Classic view of the Crowley Cabin with Farewell Gap in the distance.
Cabins?? Yep, little ones.
Cabin across the creek from us.
The cabin on the right in this photo was knocked off its pins by an avalanche a few years ago (Feels like 2, must be 5?)

Sawtooth in the afternoon

Trail Guy took many photos of cabins, and if I have people’s eddresses, I will send them. Didn’t want you all to get too chilly in the snow with 30 photos.

Water in Pencil

This is my latest pencil drawing of water. It isn’t titled, because the name of the falls is highly unpleasant. The drawing is unframed and it is on 11×14″ paper. 

When I look at this drawing, I think about Millard Fillmore. 

Who?

A president of the United States, maybe the 12th one. I’ve been listening to a podcast called “Presidential” by  Washington Post reporter Lillian Cunningham. It is both entertaining and educational, a great combination when drawing rocks and water.

I could call the painting Rocks & Water. It is a little obvious.

I could call it Fillmore.

No, that’s too obscure.

Why do “obvious” and “obscure” have the same prefix?

Any ideas?

I mean about the title of the drawing, not the weird ob words.