Look at the fancy road! (For my far-away readers, that’s Sawtooth in the distance.)
Trail Guy, being retired, spends more time in The Land of No Electricity, Internet, or Phones (unless one has StarLink, which your Central Calif. Artist does not—surprised by this?) than I do. He actually had time to hike, working around all his obligations/helpfulness to neighbors.
You can tell he took these photos by the spots in the upper right of many of them.
White Chief peak has a flat top.
There is a pond, if you know how to find it. (It’s there even if you don’t know how to find it.)
Everyone’s favorite juniper tree.
When I made it up the hill, I spent some time contemplating wildflowers. A plan is beginning to formulate, but it isn’t ready for public consumption just yet.
Thus we conclude another photo tour of Mineral King.
I thought this would be very difficult and take “forever”. Instead, I am thoroughly enjoying the process because now that the sizes and locations and base coat are down, I can simply begin drawing with my paintbrush.
Step by Step by Step. . .or Way Leads on to Way
Let’s just have a series of photos without excessive jibber-jabber.
Yes, I painted the hummingbird with both the canvas and the photo upsidedown.
Remaining Details
The bench (with a branding iron atop and the hint of a plaque), poppies, the foliage on the upper right, and a few of the transitional areas between the different images need to be finished. Oh, and the edges. This will all be easier when all of this day’s work has dried. Then it will need to just rest while I decide if I can make it better.
Final Steps
Jeff will need to see his garden in oil paint before I declare it finished. It will be signed, photographed, varnished, and then delivered.
Reading Rabbit, an oil painting by your Central Calif. artist
A decade or so ago, I began pursuing a “side hustle” in editing. This came to fruition in a conversation with my dear friend Louise, a historian and writer.
We began with the second edition of The Visalia Electric Railroad, then moved into Trail of Promises. Since then we have worked together on two novels.
The experience with Louise prepared me to work with other authors, primarily folks who had a story to tell but no idea how to get it from their computers (in one person’s case, a manual typewriter) into print.
Not wanting to keep inventory of all these books, I’ve been working on how to make some of them available to the public. (I don’t deal with Amazon because they demand too much, although some of the authors may have listed their books there.) The best method I could figure out was to make a page on my website with links to the assisted self-publishing sites that I have used: Bookbaby and Lulu. They each have online bookstores. You pay them directly, and they send a percentage of the moola to the author.
I’m writing about this today because something weird happened. Someone ordered 3 copies of Trail of Promises from my website, AND THE BOOK IS NOT LISTED ON MY WEBSITE! Excuse me for shouting; this is profoundly mysterious. I refunded her money via Paypal (who, of course, charged me), and told her I would try to figure out how to make the book available again, since it was a very short run and has been out of print for several years.
Because Lulu is very easy to deal with, and I can put the books which I have designed onto their site for sale through them, I have added Trail of Promises to OTHER PEOPLE’S BOOKS.
Now I sure do hope that the customer returns, sees the availability of the book, and reorders.
Remember this colored pencil sketch for a commissioned oil painting of someone’s garden? (Let’s call him Jeff, because that is his name.)
Jeff approved of the design for his painting and chose 12×24” for the canvas size. Having realized the benefits of starting with a sketch on an earlier commissioned oil painting,I began a larger sketch in pencil on the canvas.
Then, with paint thinned not quite to dripping, I started filling in all the white, figuring out shapes and sizes of the various items.
That’ll do. I tried to begin some detailing, but it was too wet.
Thinking back to the last oil commission of the blueberry/avocado farm, I remember being very unsure of my abilities and nervous about a successful outcome. As is always the case, it was needless to fret. The success (happy customer) has given me confidence on this one and I am proceeding with an eagerness to get to the details.
Trail Guy has said to me for years, “Success leads to success”. Mike Rowe quotes Robert Frost thus: “Way leads on to way.”
When the fog cleared off, the sun began its work of melting snow. It was a time of much wood-splitting, wood burning, friendship, marveling at the clarity and brilliance, puttering, walks, and for Trail Guy and the Farmer, a time of making sure none of our immediate neighboring cabins had broken pipes from the cold. (A friend one mile down the road didn’t have water from when the snow first fell earlier in the week until he left on Sunday, but nothing was broken, only frozen.)
Okay, enough chitchat. Have a look, first at the changing light on the Crowley Family cabin and Farewell Gap, and then photos in no particular order.
This is Empire, not Sawtooth, in case you only somewhat familiar with Mineral King.
As we left Silver City, the snow along the road made it apparent that it was going to be a bit dicey at the cabin, another 1000 feet or so above Silver City’s elevation.
There was a bit of a sunny window as we got near the valley, allowing a view of Sawtooth.
Oh-oh. Where is the snow shovel? Yeppers, I shoveled snow at the end of May!
The sun disappeared, and it got cold and foggy. Here are a couple of neighboring cabins.
I flipped over a bench on the porch so I could shovel better and was amused to see icicles hanging off the side.
Our neighbors had us over for dinner (no, they didn’t HAVE us for dinner—we all HAD pizza), and it remained foggy and very cold all evening. They have a top-notch wood stove, so we were very cozy inside.
Fog and cold continued the following day, when I went to another neighbor’s cabin to give a drawing lesson. That’s work that I love doing, and although we struggled a bit with being able to see via propane lamp, we made progress.
The following afternoon was sunny, so we continued our lessons on their deck. We opted for being a bit chilly in order to see.
The clouds came and went, and at one point while my student was trying out techniques, I was suddenly overcome by a need to photograph this window to draw sometime down the road. Literally down the road, because I might be drawing it at my studio, which has that magnificent drafting table and magnifying light.
Tomorrow I will show you how beautiful it all was when the sun came out for the rest of the cold weekend.
The Silver City Store sold two Mineral King oil paintings on opening weekend; a few days later they sold a sequoia tree painted on a wood panel.
Luckily for a future customer, I had one more ready to go. So, on the way up the hill last week, we stopped by to deliver it. While there, I took a few more interior photos. The store is good to me*, and I happily advertise for them.
This year I have brought a few pencil reproduction prints of appropriate subjects. It’s been awhile since those were on public view.
Sawtooth on the sawblade is not for sale.
I designed this logo several decades ago and they are still using it. One of the original mugs (doesn’t say “Mountain Resort”) is on my drawing table with colored pencils in it.
Terrible light, but I wanted to show you the no-longer-functional gas pump and the snow outside.
There was quite a bit of snow in Mineral King when we arrived. Tomorrow’s post will be about that, accelerated to Thursday, because there are too many photos of Mineral King to just confine the topic to Friday’s post.
Custom art is an important piece of my art business. There are countless scenes and objects that I’d really enjoy painting or drawing, but in 33 years of earning a living with art, I have come to understand that people want what they want, not necessarily what I want.
Therefore, I make custom art, which is another way of saying that I accept commissions.
An acquaintance (friend of a friend) got in touch via my website to request an oil painting collage of many views of his garden.
I’ve done many pencil collages before, but never one in oil paint. This is going to stretch my design and painting abilities, for certain and for sure.
Here is a look at a pencil collage so you know what is meant by “collage”. It’s not actual cutting and gluing pieces together; instead it is combining multiple pictures into one larger piece.
CUSTOMER PHOTOS
The potential customer sent me these photos (actually more than this) of his garden. Although nothing stands out to me as a focal point, and I have no plan-view to understand how all the pieces work together, I do understand a person’s love of one’s own garden.
For once in my scattered approach to business, I had the presence of mind to ask for a deposit in order to begin the design phase. In custom art, it’s crucially important to communicate clearly with the customer. It takes several hours of emailing, thinking, studying the photos, and yes, even lying awake at night trying to figure it out. (Hmmm, do you get paid to lie awake at night?)
SKETCH | DESIGN
After the deposit check arrived, I procrastinated for half a day, trying to figure out how to begin. No need to show you all the mental wrangling. Instead, have a look at the sketch, which I started in pencil and then colored in with colored pencils. It looks like a scribbly mess, because it kind of is. However, it doesn’t make sense to perfect something when we are tiptoeing into new territory, unsure of the destination.
The actual sketch is 2-1/2 x 5”, a proportion of 1:2. This will translate into a 10 x 20” or 12 x 24” canvas. (Other sizes too, but I have canvases this size here on hand, ready to go.)
It may look like a mess to you, but I can assure you that the potential customer knows what each item is. He gave me a list of the things that matter to him. I hope this captures the feel and that I can execute this in oil paint.
P.S. The customer emailed yesterday to say he is pleased and to paint it 12×24”!
This is Hume Lake as seen from the footbridge that crosses Ten-Mile Creek on the end of the lake toward the dam. For the past eight summers, I’ve had an idyllic reunion with a childhood friend at her Hume cabin. It is modest and rustic, and our times there are a real bright spot in life.
“Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
That’s a song that we sometimes sing together, especially when we are out in a rowboat on the lake. We also have been known to sing “When Sammy Put the Paper on the Wall”, “Kookaburra”, and a round with 3 different parts including “Fish and Chips and Vinegar”.
