February Flowers in Three Rivers

February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.

I love February. Wish it was longer.

Another Winter Walk in Three Rivers

I love February in Three Rivers, so I walked a route that I haven’t walked in a long time, wanting to test my foot and my ability to endure discomfort. There were plenty of things to distract me, such as stealing a tangerine, dodging traffic, and taking photos.

This is an area where I hope to bring a couple of artist friends so we can paint (and maybe swat bugs) together.
A friend said she cannot see the elephant on Alta Peak, so I took this photo and outlined its image in hopes that the elephant shows for her.

I take the same photos over and over, always hoping that I will discover a familiar subject in better light or find another angle in order to make an irresistible painting someday.

P.S. In case you were wondering, 3.5 miles, foot discomfort tolerable, and I figured I could have gone another 1-2 miles without actively looking for a hatchet.

A Winter Walk in Three Rivers

What passes for winter in Three Rivers usually involves sunshine and green hills. Do those folks down the hill know that the fog and gray usually ends at Terminus Dam (Lake Kaweah)?

I walked a new route yesterday. It’s been awhile since I went that way, back before peripheral neuropathy when I could actually walk that far. Now I have to drive there, which feels somewhat counterintuitive when one is seeking exercise. It is busier than my normal routes, there is more litter, and sometimes I have to cross over to the wrong side of the road in order to have a shoulder to walk on. Sometimes it is worth extra effort to experience something new.

The fountain (hard to see here) is dolphins. With those palm trees, I wonder if these folks moved here from Malibu or Florida or even Pismo.

Starting Over Again. . .

It is time to do a few small paintings to sell at Kaweah Arts. The proprietor requested Sequoia trees and mountain ranges. I looked through my canvas sizes, looked through my photos and made some decisions. Inventory number, title, wire on the back, add to the inventory lists, crop and enhance the photos—all needs to happen before paint lands on the canvas.

Wait! This isn’t a Sequoia tree or a mountain range. What is it?

It is a scene I have wanted to paint for many years, but felt it was a bit too hard. This will be one of my long slow paintings, with many many layers. There is no deadline, and I want it to be Most Totally Excellent.

Okay, this is a standard 6×18″ painting of a big tree, AKA redwood, AKA Sequoia, formally known as Sequoia gigantea, not to be confused with the redwoods of northern California, called Sequoia sempervirens.

WHAT IS THIS???

This is a work in progress, a housewarming present for someone Very Important in my life. She showed me the pieces she has in her kitchen, and I was inspired to ask her what I could paint to add to the collection. (These might not be the actual pieces that she has, but hers are very similar to these.)

The sequoias and mountain range paintings can just hold their camels* for a little bit. I have some designing, improving, polishing, rearranging, composing ahead.

*Learned to say this while in Israel back in 2016 and decided it is more fun than horses.

When I Get Older. . .

“. . .Will you still need me, Will you still read me, When I’m sixty-four?”

Because I am now.

Neither Trail Guy nor I had been to the main part of Sequoia National Park since before the fires (2020, 2021) and flood (2022-2023).

I love to climb Moro Rock, so that is how I chose to spend my birthday. The burned parts of the Park looked terrible, but the road is great and the unburned parts are beautiful too.

Enough yammering. Here are some photos.

Lots of steps to climb
We see Alta Peak from our house in Three Rivers so it is fun to see it closer from Moro Rock.
The red oval is circling two almost invisible plumes of smoke from the current fire at Redwood Canyon.
It looks as if the stairs end here, but if you make a sharp right, they keep on aclimbin’.
On the way up and at the top we heard an English accent, several languages we didn’t recognize, and what I think was Korean. Everyone was polite, helping each other out with photos, moving aside on narrow places.
One last look up.

Crescent Meadow was our next destination.

The road there passes the Parker Group, which is a great source of sequoias to paint, along with Tunnel Log, which I’ve also painted several times.

Tharp’s Log is an interesting spot, just about 1/2 mile from Crescent Meadow. I like seeing the human history in national parks.
It is rare to see the needles from a redwood/sequoia tree because they are usually so high up in the sky that you can’t tell what they look like. This time I kept my eyes open for a baby redwood, and voila! here it is. The needles look fluffy compared to pines, firs, and cedars. (They aren’t.)
I took this through the windshield on the way home when traffic stopped. Four Guardsmen is often a traffic stopper. Apparently people forget how to drive when they are in a national park.

The day was an experience in nostalgia. Trail Guy used to be Road Guy, with 37 years of working for Sequoia. Things now look different, because things are done differently than when he retired 11 years ago. Some are an improvement, and some in the category of Are You Kidding??

It was also a day of comparison. Seemed like Moro Rock’s steps were a bit steeper than remembered, and the handrail seemed a bit lower. The Generals Highway was infinitely better than the Mineral King road. The trails were mostly paved and certainly much flatter than in Mineral King. We talked to someone from Germany, someone from Ecuador, and heard many languages that we could not identify. There were lots of people, particularly for a midweek day, AFTER Labor Day.

What a great way to spend a birthday! And, although I wasn’t driving Fernando, it was a business trip because I got a few more photos for painting from.

In conclusion, “Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I’m sixty-four?”

Because I am now. (But not losing my hair—growing it, actually, to save in case I do lose it!)

More thinking

There isn’t much to report on the Mineral King Road. Work is in progress, but there are People in Charge Who Make Important Decisions, and we are the little people not in charge, awaiting those decisions.

Meanwhile, I am in a holding pattern. Do I continue to draw and paint, without places to sell, building up a large body of work? Or do I just go pull more weeds? 

There is a show coming, but it is a Long Way Off (that’s how I am thinking of the show, capitalized, titled “Long Way Off”). I have been thinking, planning, digging through photos, wondering if there is a way to rework unsold pieces, or if I should just paint over the top, wondering if there are too many repetitious subjects, wondering if I am clever and creative enough to paint new subjects that people might want, or if I am clever and creative enough to jazz up the unsold pieces for Long Way Off.

In order to decide what to paint, I chose the subjects, then looked through my existing paintings to see what sizes were already done. I went through my numerous files of photos, and chose ones that stood out. I don’t know why they stood out, but I just went with my gut instinct. 

The categories are ag, the lake, the river, hills, Mineral King, Sequoia, trees, Hume Lake, Balch Park, Yokohl, and of course, citrus with foothills and mountains. In other words, everything I love about Tulare County (plus Hume Lake in Fresno County). In more other words, places I frequent, not too far away, close and close-ish to home, places I know.

There is plenty of time to figure this out. For all I know, the Long Way Off show might decide that I am passé, a has-been, and cancel the show.

I am not worried, simply curious about what might be next for my ever-changing art business.

Now I think I’ll go pull some more weeds.

More Yardening Photos

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This post about yardening is not about procrastination; it is about pure enjoyment of one of the most beautiful springs in recent memory. Is it just Three Rivers? 

Our cats have always loved feather grass. They try to kick the stuffing out of it when they are kittens, and then lie on top of it or try to hide in it when they grow up.

Basil was the only item that the fantastic plant nursery did not have; I found it at our local hardware store the next day.

Here is the studio to make this post a little bit about my art business.

It is a mystery as to why hollyhock keep volunteering when the deer bite them down to nothing.

In the past several years, I have weeded all around the baby poppies and ended up with a nice showing. This year I decided to skip that task, maybe because it rained almost every weekend. The result is tall weeds and almost no poppy plants.

Chances are there will be very few blossoms.

Had to end with a studio photo (and a bit of the painting workshop) to remind myself to get back to work.

 

Finding Information (Instead of Woo-woo Inspiration)

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I was procrastinating (and yardening) in order to think. Sometimes procrastination is simply waiting for inspiration. If you are a person of faith, that is a time of waiting for the Lord to show the way through some of life’s more puzzling situations.

One of my puzzling situations was how to paint the mountains accurately on a commissioned oil painting when I didn’t have the right photos. Sure, Part A is in Photo A, Part C is in Photo C, but then Photo B doesn’t match or fit because it was taken from a different location or there is a tree blocking what I need to see.

I can fake mountains and foothills pretty well, but this particular painting is calling for accuracy. Well, actually, Mr. Customer is calling for accuracy in the mountains, and I fully understand and endorse his desire. The point of the painting for him, besides recalling a moment in time, is to be able to see specifically which peak is where. 

I had a good start, but there were some significant difficulties, such as what happens between Castle Rocks and Sawtooth. I could make a few white dabs, but when Mr. Customer and I try to name peaks, our efforts would be stymied by misleading information. (Heaven forbid that we participate in dis and mis information!)

The answer came while having lunch on Rocky Hill.

Let’s crop and enhance it.

Nope, this isn’t the span of mountains I am seeking. It’s in this photo, but those beeves are in the way.

I cropped out the cattle, messed with the exposure so the mountains were very distinct against the sky, and VOILA! (That is French for THIS IS WHAT I WANT AND NEED! Maybe. I don’t speak French.)

Was I seeking inspiration?

Maybe. People who aren’t artists think there is some sort of woo-woo inspiration thing that causes artists to do our thing.

I am more practical. There is beauty everywhere, subjects that would make great paintings, but as a professional, I have to take into account what my customers (and potential customers) want.

So, more than inspiration, I was seeking information, but needed help to find it, and then, right on time, the Lord provided. (If you are not a person of faith, you might credit “the universe”. That’s too woo-woo for me.)

 

 

 

Experimenting with Alien Pencils

As a professional artist, it is important to keep my work consistent and to meet deadlines. This doesn’t leave much room for experimenting, something that I view as a luxury for hobbyists. Hobbyists can do anything they choose, whatever inspires them, no deadlines, no need for a signature look (called a “voice” in Art Speak).


A number of years ago, a drawing student/friend gave me a super generous gift of some pencils that I had never heard of. “Graphitint” by Derwent are water soluble pencils, described as having “a hint of earthy color”, but are neither graphite nor colored pencils. After making a chart to see what this “hint of earthy color” looked like, I tried a bit of water on the swatches, drew a small picture, decided it was hideous, and just put it all away.

Recently my friend Carrie Lewis asked me to write another article for her digital magazine, Colored Pencil Magic. At first I told her that I had already written everything I knew about colored pencils. Then I remembered my Graphitints, right there in my stack of colored pencil boxes and tins.

I couldn’t very well write an article stating I had tried them ten years ago and then shoved them aside. 

So, I decided to learn more about these alien pencils. I chose a photo to work from and started another chart to pick the right colors and get a feel for them.

What alien creatures – soft like 6B graphite, but still different than colored pencils. I thought back to a great drawing teacher I’d had who only let us use 6B pencils, keeping a super sharp point. That gave me the confidence to dive in here. After all, it’s only paper, and I do know how to draw.

It was enjoyable, because I listened to Peggy Rowe read from her book Vacuuming in the Nude and Other Ways to Get Attention, (on her son’s blog “The Way I Heard It”). And it was enjoyable because I love to draw, even with alien pencils.

Enough. Many layers, like colored pencils. Lots of ad libbing, along with severe editing, and this little 5×7″ drawing with alien pencils was finished.

She Loves Flowers, Chapter Three

I wasn’t joking about loving flowers.

My yard is huge, and these represent little dots of color, scattered all around. It is not like some classic English garden, or as if everything is perfectly placed and professionally landscaped. But oh my goodness, I do love me some flowers.

P.S. This post comes to you after a very full busy weekend. I will tell you a bit about it later this week. Now, hold it down, will ya? I want to take a nap.