An Attempt to Get Into Mineral King

Was Trail Guy really attempting to get into Mineral King? Or was he just having a fun day with his buddy Mike? Whatever the motivation, they didn’t make it to the end of the road but they did have a good time together.

The photos aren’t in any particular order, and I can’t identify where each photo was taken. They were snow avalanches, and what shows is all the debris left behind.

Friend Mike and the Cushman Trackster
The waterfall looks camouflaged here. It is the one called “Three Falls Below The Gate”; can you pick it out?

The redbud is still quite beautiful on the lower part of the road. Isn’t the color brilliant after all the browns up the road?

Wildflowers in Three Rivers

The hill behind my house has a wide variety of wildflowers each spring.

The steepness makes it hard to photograph. Or, perhaps it is the lack of skill on the part of the photographer. I miss my manual cameras. Digital cameras have many advantages, but all this automatic baloney is a real hassle. Guess that is life – the more advantages, the more disadvantages too. But I digress. Let’s just enjoy the wildflowers, shall we?

It Is Finished.

(Seems like an appropriate title with Easter coming, no disrespect intended.)

This was a long pencil drawing commission – lots of emails, photos, sketches, decisions, waiting, and oh my, lots and lots of leaves to draw.

Here is a look, start to finish (minus all the photos, emails, changes, decisions, et cetera)

You can see that the customers chose neither A nor B.  C was a result of a photo I took at the orchard, because they wanted something that distinguished theirs from every other walnut grove.

 

Now it is at the framer, and then, finally, it will be presented to the intended recipient, who will be happily surprised. (I’m fairly certain he does not read my blog.)

Testing a Coloring Book

Designing coloring books involves drawing, my favorite thing. Coloring the pages is for other people to do.

But, I got curious. So, I gave it a try in the ag coloring book, Heart of Agriculture: Celebrating Tulare County Farm Bureau’s First 100 years.

This is as far as I got on the title page. I filled the letters in with blues, because there is very little blue in agriculture unless you drive a New Holland Tractor. (Cats are yellow, Massey-Ferguson are red, John Deere are green: I don’t know about Kubota or Mahindra or International Harvesters.) Couldn’t decide on the cow – dairy? beef? Reddish? Black Angus?

And this is the beginning of the citrus page, one of my favorite designs in the book. I don’t know why I started at the bottom of the page. Look – more blue! It makes the yellows and oranges look brighter.

This stuff is time-consuming. I think it is probably the most fun for people who don’t draw or paint (or knit). It would be a fun group activity – a bunch of friends sharing conversation, ideas and colored pencils or markers. A bowl of M&Ms would be appropriate too. . . dark chocolate, if I’m there.

You can get the Heart of Ag coloring book at the Three Rivers Mercantile, Rosemary & Thyme or the Mural Gallery in Exeter, or on my website here. And, of course, if you see me around somewhere, I almost always have some in the trunk of my car, along with many of the other books I’ve published. (coloring books and The Cabins of Wilsonia)

After Hours

On breaks from the studio, during my “commute” to the studio, after hours, and on weekends, this is a glimpse into what inspires me, fills my time, keeps me interested in marching on.

Ethan, a boy from Three Rivers, sells beautiful eggs, and there may be some paintings soon.

This type of iris is my favorite. The colors are never quite as good in the photos as real life, but sometimes I have done okay with oil paint in capturing these. (It’s been a few years since I painted any.) See that shadow through the lace? That is a Peeping Sam(son). Making mosaic items –stepping stones, a few table-tops, a bowling ball, drinking fountain and light pole – is a striking change from drawing in pencil. These were done with tiles I found at garage sales and a few left-over pieces from when I was slamming these out by the dozens. The big box stores don’t carry bright colors or pretty designs any more, so I think the era of easy tile buying has ended. We planted tomatoes and stepping stones. Trail Guy built this fortress against deer, gophers and birds. Guess we’ll still have to deal with the bugs. The herb garden is my place of refuge. The various fence pieces are all salvaged. It won’t keep out the deer, but it will slow them down a bit. It looks a little hokey but I get satisfaction from using what we have available (or “upcycling” in the current vernacular). And sometimes I just sit, read, knit, pick the catkins out of my hair from the mulberry branches overhead, and smell the lilacs.

Flowers in Pencil

I may have mentioned a time or two that I love to draw in pencil. 

It came to my attention that the group behind the First Saturday Three Rivers events appreciates pencil drawings of their subject matter, because they are useful for an ad in an old-fashioned newspaper that doesn’t print in color.

I had provided photos of many flowers and 2 pencil drawings for this year’s theme of wildflowers. Hearing that the drawings were useful, I did 2 more for their use.

The first is Columbine, a flower which comes in several colors – yellow and red in the Sierra, blue in the Rockies.

The second is Farewell To Spring, which is a purplish pink. It always makes me a bit sad when it appears because it means that spring and green are over to be replaced by heat and brown. Without the color, it sort of looks like poppies.

I rarely participate by opening my studio on the first Saturday of the month for a variety of reasons. However, I do support them with my checkbook, photos, and drawings every year.

Turbulent Times

Sometimes I tell you about the good parts of living in Three Rivers (running into people at the Post Office or on a walk, having a mailbox at the bottom of my driveway to drop off things). Sometimes I tell you the bad parts, which are mostly attributable to Tulare County in general rather than Three Rivers.

The down side to living in a self-contained small town and community is that when bad things happen, no one is untouched. Last week Three Rivers lost 2 men to suicide. Each had his own reasons which are not public knowledge, and each one left a trail of broken-hearted and baffled people behind. The ripples of sadness extend outward into every part of town.

This pencil drawing is called “Turbulent Times”, and it feels appropriate right now.

Turbulent Times, a pencil drawing

Pencil Drawing Commission

Do you remember reading that I was doing a pencil drawing of a walnut grove, a commission, and was waiting for more information? I received what I needed, finished it, and now I am waiting to hear if the commissioning parties are happy.

So, I’ll show you another pencil drawing commission that I finished. The customer is very happy.

This was difficult. The size is 8×10, and that is really too small for all this detail. I did most of it underneath a large magnifying light, and resolved to stop offering the 8×10 size. It was a relief that the customer didn’t want the family sitting in the front yard – I would have just had to say a definite and resolute NO! The horses looked a little weird in the photo – as if they had horns or something. When I asked the customer why they looked so weird, she said, “Who knows? It is Oklahoma! Just make them look normal.”

Too funny – are horses weird in Oklahoma? Maybe in the late 1800s or early 1900s they wore ear points. 

I also wondered about the alternating colors of paint on the porch pillars. Red and white is my guess, but perhaps dark green and white.

Interesting pencil commission job – have I mentioned lately that I love to draw in pencil?

And here’s a little aside about living in Three Rivers: the customer/friend has been telling me for awhile that she’d like me to draw her old family homestead farmhouse. I saw her at the Post Office and reminded her. She was ready to begin, so she dropped it off in a special mailbox I have near the bottom of my driveway. We did the entire job without actually seeing one another in person – all email and drop-offs, no more chance encounters at the Post Office or on a walk. We live about 1-1/4 miles apart and often walk past one another’s homes.

In addition to loving to draw in pencil, I love living in Three Rivers.

Finishing Drawings For Other People

Every week I teach people how to draw and have been doing this since 1994. Sometimes people stay for years, sometimes they discover it isn’t for them after a few lessons, and sometimes a year or two satisfies their itch to learn to draw. Sometimes people grow up, graduate, move away, retire, travel, or something else.

Two girls quit drawing lessons and left unfinished work. I don’t remember when this happened, and somehow I ended up with the drawings and the photos from which they were working.

This may surprise you, Gentle Reader, but I am not a perfectionist. I am a finisher. It takes focus and discipline for me to try and perfect something, and it isn’t natural behavior for me. (Remember the drawing of the bridge over the Tule River a few months ago, the one that I used for February in the 2017 calendar? Yikes. I needed a perfectionist to stop me from printing that before I embarrassed myself.)

Girl One began a drawing of a border collie, her very first (and last) with me, working from a calendar. I don’t work from copyrighted photos, but often my students do. I am friends with Girl One’s dad, so I thought I’d surprise him with this:

She did the hard work of setting it up and shaded the eyes before deciding that drawing lessons weren’t for her. I had fun finishing it, and then I signed both of our names.

Girl Two was with me from 6th grade until she graduated from high school. She left this unfinished self-portrait. I am friends with her parents, so I thought I’d finish it and give it to them.

She did the hard work of setting it all up and shading the eyes and mouth. This made it easy to just add more shading, and wow, what a pretty girl! Again, I signed both of our names.

I don’t know the proper protocol for any of this, so I make it up as I go along. There is tremendous satisfaction in finishing things and giving them to the people who will appreciate them.