While I Was Waiting

Painting workshop and studio

There is a trick to doing art shows and open studios. The trick is waiting patiently, on stand-by, all systems ready to go.

Studio ready for guests

How does one be productive while waiting but not be so involved that a visitor/customer/guest feels like an interruption?

Coloring olives with my Blackwing Colors in Heart of Agriculture coloring book (WHY won’t this photo rotate?? Sorry, but you’ll just have to tilt your head!)

It is a mindset. I remind myself that on THIS day, I am not here to produce; I am here for the visitors. Therefore, anything that gets done is a bonus.

  • Knit
  • Weed
  • Color
  • Begin a drawing, before things get too detailed and engrossing
  • Update inventory lists
  • Update the website
  • Edit a chapter for the upcoming book about the Springville TB Hospital (This one was tricky, but I squoze it in before I heard a car arrive!)
  • Enjoy the beautiful spring day in Three Rivers
California’s state flower in my yard

As much as I’d like to just make art and be left alone to do so, this is not realistic. The business of art requires interaction with the public, most of whom are interesting and pleasant people. The business of art also requires keeping track of inventory, updating one’s website, and planning ahead.

Another pencil drawing begun for the 2019 calendar

Sometimes, it requires sitting, being available, and waiting.

Piper kept me company for awhile.

P.S. Knitting and weeding are bonus activities, reserved for recess time.

8 Recent Happenings

Today there are many topics to address, so we will have a long list.

  1. I went away with my sisters and our Mom for a family funeral. Supposed to be a sad time, but it was surprisingly fun. 

    Me and four of the most important women in my life feeling happy to be together
  2. Tomorrow and Sunday is the South Valley ARTists’ Studio Tour. Will I see you there? You can buy tickets the day of the event at the places listed on their website.
  3. I hope the studio tour has more attendance than First Saturday Three Rivers. There were 4 people covering for me at my studio while I was with my chicky-babes (see #1) and 11 visitors.  ELEVEN?? Bless you, those eleven who came out in the rain. I hope you enjoyed your wildflower freebie!
  4. What a week of learning! I actually designed a website for my friend who manages vacation rentals here in Three Rivers. She got tired of waiting for the guy who said he’d do it for her, and I jumped in with both feet but perhaps only half my brain. We will do a lot of polishing, but the site is ready to be seen. Sequoiavacationrentals.NET It was thrilling to be able to help her, to have some experience, to have all sorts of photos to supplement hers, to FIGURE THIS OUT!! It was hard. I did it anyway.
  5. Why am I designing a site for someone and paying someone else to design a site for me? Because mine is very very complicated. There is much work ahead for me. Good thing I practiced on my friend.
  6. It was so beautiful in Three Rivers this week that instead of working in the studio (drawings to be done for the 2019 calendar and a few more paintings, including a Sawtooth commission), I pulled weeds. It was a nice break from figuring out how to build a website.

    Lots and lots of weeds.
  7. Piper is doing well. There may be kittens soon; I hope the little guy adjusts and is polite.
  8. Trail Guy took a day trip to Mineral King. The road has a gnarly slide across it above the ranger station.

See why I had to make a list?? And, in case you were wondering, I am not superstitious about today’s day and date combination.

Kaweah Post Office Oil Paintings 2

Thank you for returning to see the next set of seven Kaweah Post Office oil paintings. Shall we commence our tour of the growth of my painting skills through the capitalistic exploitation of an innocent elderly landmark? (That would have cracked my Dad up – is anyone else out there laughing along?)

Kaweah Post Office VIII. Obviously, the little post office was popular in 2012. This one was bought by a celebrity who occasionally comes to Three Rivers. That isn’t as a big of a deal to me as the fact that a stranger bought my work!
Kaweah Post Office IX was painted in 2013.
Kaweah Post Office X was painted in 2014. It might have been the first one sold to raise money for the new roof. I think it is wrong to see this much sky behind it, because there is a steep hill back there.
Kaweah Post Office XI is my favorite so far. This was done in 2015, specifically to help with the new roof. Another lying sky.
Kaweah Post Office XII was also painted in 2015, also painted for the roof repair. But shouldn’t there be a little sky showing off to the side? This is another thing I forgot to check when I was there in person. Frankly, I don’t think anyone else cares!
This one is simply titled Kaweah Post Office. I lost the sequential numbering momentum, so that means that #13 is actually #14. Does anyone care? Too bad I didn’t skip #13, like ships and some apartment buildings do. And yet another lying sky. . .
Kaweah Post Office XIII was also painted in 2015. It is currently available at Anne Lang’s Emporium in Three Rivers or from my website. 8×10″, oil on wrapped canvas, $125 plus tax (unless you buy it from my website which STILL is unable to charge sales tax for some irritating and unknown reason).

And thus we conclude our tour of my endless depictions of the Kaweah Post Office, popular landmark in Three Rivers, but not where I get my mail, in case you were wondering.

Kaweah Post Office Oil Paintings

Kaweah Post Office, first painted in 2009 with three years of painting under my belt, no confidence in my ability to paint architectural subjects and not a ton of experience in photographing my work either.

Every time an oil painting of the Kaweah Post Office sells, I paint it again.

Kaweah Post Office II, painted in 2010 (Where is the flag???)
Kaweah Post Office III, painted in 2011
Kaweah Post Office IV, painted in 2010, getting really elaborate with my details as my confidence and skill grows.
Kaweah Post Office V, complete with the cigar Indian on the porch, also painted in 2010.
Kaweah Post Office VI, 2012 (must have taken awhile for the previous one to sell)
Kaweah Post Office VII, also painted in 2012

That’s a lot of oil paintings of the Kaweah Post Office. But wait! There’s more! Come back tomorrow and see the second set of seven.

About the Kaweah Post Office

The Kaweah Post Office is about 3 miles up North Fork Drive in Three Rivers, California. For awhile it was known as the smallest operating post office in the USA. Now it is operated in a weird little way; the woman who owns the building goes to the Three Rivers Post Office to collect the mail and then brings it to Kaweah to pop it into the boxes. 

People who live near the post office are quick to tell you that they live in Kaweah, not Three Rivers, thank you very much. It has its own zip code (93237), so I guess that makes it its own town.

The building is very picturesque and old-timey, established in 1890, but I think the current building was constructed in 1910. It is also sort of falling apart. I don’t know what will happen to it. But, I don’t know what will happen to anything or anybody, and neither does anyone else.

It has a ton of visual appeal, which is why I continue to draw and paint it. Have a look at some of the drawings. I’m not showing you the very first one because it is downright embarrassing.

 

Drawn in 1999 (last century!)
Drawn in 2010 for the 100th year celebration
Drawn in 2018

Tomorrow I will show you the first seven oil paintings of the Kaweah Post Office. Not “THE FIRST”; MY first. I’m sure there must be dozens of other artists through the years that have chosen this little jewel.

Field Trip or Procrastination?

While working on the umpteenth pencil drawing of the Kaweah Post Office, I was struck by how stupid it is to guess at what is around and behind the little building. Why am I struggling with an incomplete photograph when all I have to do is drive about 4 or 5 miles and see the thing in person??

This is the photo I was using, and there is green chaos all around the edges. Besides, I took this photo in October of 2010, so I suspect things have changed.

Indeed, they have. I know the biggest oak lost a limb; I helped raise money to replace the roof by selling oil paintings of the Kaweah Post Office, donating half of whatever they auctioned for. But where is the little fence with the gate?Would you look at that? It is gone! But wait! I think I see it. . .That’s no help. Guess I’ll just stick to my old photo. The background works, just sort of scribbling in blurry curly growing symbols. 

Are you curious about the porch and the inside? Have a look:

After goofing off enjoying a spring morning outing, I went back to the drawing board. (Do you know anyone else who can literally say that?)

From Shed to Cottage

My studio began as a shed. We filled it with avocado green sinks and other junk when we remodeled our house 19 years ago. When we remodeled the interior of the studio in December 2001, I was thrilled to stop commuting to Exeter 5-6 days a week.

Well whoopeedoo, I painted the door all fancy white.

Gradually I added plants; this flowering pear tree looks great in February and November. Sometimes I wonder if it leans so much because Perkins pushed it each time he scratched there.

Studio in spring
Studio in fall, after I painted a mural on the big blank canvas that also serves as a door.

I kept adding plants and little things like the mosaic stepping stones and table, and Cowboy Bert made me the tractor seat and a railing for the steps (With a last name of Weldon, he must be a welder). Next, I painted the workshop.

Boring mural, never completed.

Then I got tired of the mural and began another one, but never liked it well enough to bother finishing.

 

What’s an artist to do? Paint another mural, of course.

With the fancy new wildflower mural, the siding really looked shabby.

This time, we centered the sign over the door rather than under the gable point.

Incremental changes really do add up. Now I am the proud and grateful owner and occupant of a darling little shingled cottage.

The interior isn’t always neat, because it is where I work, with lots of coming and going, and a variety of activity in the 11×14′ space.

Tomorrow is the first Saturday of April and my studio will be one of the stops. The theme is wildflowers. Stop by Anne Lang’s Emporium for a map and directions, and come by the studio for a little wildflower freebie! (Due to a death in my family, my studio will be staffed by some of the dearest people to me in the whole wide world.)

New Mineral King Cards For Sale

Last summer I had a hankering to draw some new Mineral King pictures in pencil. I did four of them without a plan for reproduction or framing. Artists make art, and I am a Central California artist making art of the flyover center of California, my main source of inspiration (along with liking to drive and to eat.)

This spring I decided to test the marketability of these drawings as cards. These are packages of 4 different cards, 5×7″, blank inside with envelopes, $15 per package. There are only 9 5 packages available. Through this blog post and Saturday’s open studio, I will decide if these are popular enough to print in greater quantity.

This sort of thing is just part of the business of art. Make the art I want, and then figure out if there is a market for it. . .

This is the insert that goes inside the package of cards. The drawings are too small to really appreciate on the insert, so I’ve placed them underneath. Scroll on, Gentle Blog Reader. What?? No Honeymoon Cabin?

Nope – sometimes an artist’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. (But she is willing to listen to customer requests, within reason.)

P.S. I thought at first that $15 was a little high-ish for 4 cards. Then I went inside a real store and looked at real cards that are sold one at a time. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? I was astonished at the prices, so believe these are a bargain.

Private Oil Painting Lessons

Occasionally I have a chance to teach a handful of people what little I know about oil painting. I have only been painting for 12 years, so while I feel qualified to share what I know, I don’t think of myself as a qualified oil painting teacher.

There are 3 women about 2 hours away from Three Rivers who have been learning to oil paint by various methods and by painting together. They invited me to teach them what I know. One was my dear friend, The Captain, who successfully painted a pomegranate with me about a month ago.

This time we painted poppies, each person working from a different photo, but all mixing similar colors and tackling the project in the same order, but at differing individual speeds.

  1. We squeeze out our double primary palette colors and mix up three shades of the background greens.
  2. We draw the approximate shape of the poppy on the canvas, rotating the canvas and photo to view all the shapes from every angle and learn how to erase.
  3. The background gets painted first, working first with the darkest colors and moving lighter.
  4. We mix 3 shades of orange for the poppies.
  5. We paint the poppies.
  6. We let it dry overnight (only sort of dry – this is oil paint!) and then repaint the background for better coverage and more detail.
  7. We repaint the poppy for better coverage and detail.
  8. We evaluate one another’s paintings, congratulating the others on their success and belittling our own efforts (sad, but true).
  9. We exclaim over the fun, the success, and say that we need to do this again.

    At the end of day one’s painting session.

 

Oranges, Completed, Sold and Delivered

As I showed you in yesterday’s post.
Completed in pencil (graphite)
With the barest hint of colored pencil.
Photoshopped for best reproduction in the 2019 calendar.

That last step after the photoshop thing only shows a subtle difference, but I wanted you to know that the business of art includes thinking ahead toward how a piece can be used besides just selling the original.

And the original is sold and sent! That makes me happy for three reasons: it is going to someone important to me who will truly appreciate it; it won’t be languishing in a drawer while I dither about whether or not to get it framed; it produced an income (not all speculation drawings sell).