Was it mid-day? or mid-morning? Dunno. Nobody cares. Let’s have some photos.
Oops, these are from the early morning walk.
Look how much the tulip opened in the 1/2 hour we were on the walk!
This is Ray Hartman ceanothus, maybe the best one I’ve seen. There are several in the neighborhood.
I like this mural, but the Ivanhoe library mural remains my favorite.
Comb Rocks in the distance.
I shook this blooming tree branch to see if my inferior phone camera could catch the pollen blowing around. This is a Chinese pistache tree, the kind that self-sows and looks brilliant in the fall.
The rest of these photos were at home. It was so beautiful out that I lollygagged around, taking photos, procrastinating about diving into that indoor editing job.
My life is mellow, everything near home, just the way I like it. Except for that nagging book deadline. Self-imposed, but still urgent. Back to work!
UPDATE: The book is now finished. . . I wrote today’spost a week ago.
A dear friend had a birthday and expressed a desire to see my Ivanhoe library mural. I thought we’d just have a little tour, ending with lunch at Super Taco in Woodlake. We barely made the trip before all the green went away. This happens when it gets hot in March. Tryna not be greedy, because we have had several long cool springs in the last handful of years. But we do NOT like it when it is hot, there is no rain, and the grasses and flowers shrivel too soon.
Sorry. Didn’t mean to complain.
First we drove around the country roads, and I showed her the two places where I grew up, along with Twin Buttes, and a different angle of Venice Hills than she is accustomed to. The orange blossoms were divine.
Then we headed to Ivanhoe proper. Not much to see there except for the library. I felt doggone proud of this mural; it is currently my favorite. Am I allowed to say that? Oh yeah, that’s right, it’s my blog.
This is a map showing the way to the Lone Oak Cemetery. I visited it in first grade, because my best friend Kelly lived next to it. I tried to find it again when I was working on the mural, but felt weird driving down someone’s driveway. With my friend in her 2007 white Mustang convertible, I didn’t feel as weird about the sense of trespassing.
Kelly’s house is gone and there is a big one in its place, and we just headed down the driveway as if we had an invitation. Boom! It was exactly right there!
The sign is a lie. The cemetery isn’t maintained. It is in sorry shape.
Here is the lone oak. Must be a good source of underground water, because the oak is a Valley Oak, a quercus lobata, and there is also an enormous cottonwood tree (those leaves at the top of the photo.)
What is this bizarro stuff? Chiseled headstones without any words, and tangerine trees in the background with the nets to prevent cross-pollination.
The wall was weird. I wonder if it was made from the stuff from when Kelly’s house got torn down. See the wind machine in the distance?
The highlight for me was seeing the poppies in bloom. When Kelly and I were poking around in the first grade, I picked a few poppies and she told me I was going to jail because it is against the law to pick poppies (the state flower) in California.
I didn’t go to jail or even get in trouble by any grownups, and the poppies have survived for 60 years despite my accidental vandalism.
We also circled around the backside of Venice Hills, and had some fantastic tacos for lunch before heading back home. I had a lot of book work to do. Gonna get it done, yeppers, I am!
Currently I am doing a final edit, photo edit, and formatting a book that has been a long time coming (about the TB hospital in Springville, here in Tulare County). Things are a bit urgent, so here is a post about my road trip 10 days ago, because this is my blog and I can write whatever I want. Any questions? (Besides how to comment; I KNOW commenting is a pain of signing in, user names, passwords, etc. I HATE that stuff and feel grateful to anyone willing to navigate it all.)
The drive was beautiful. It was green with wildflowers. I left at 6:30 a.m. and seemed to encounter cars coming up the hill about every 1/2 mile or so before getting to Highway 65, which caused me to ask, “Why all the traffic?”
This is just hilarious in view of heading to Southern California. I live in a place where we simply say “The Freeway”; everyone I went to visit has to refer to the many freeways in their lives by the numbers. Do they say “Five” or do they say “The Five”? And if they say “The Five”, do they also say “The Walmart” and “The Facebook”? I forgot to notice.
The photos never do justice to reality. Additionally, I was holding up my phone while watching the road (OF COURSE I WAS WATCHING THE ROAD!) and hoping to get lucky. (No film was wasted, but many photos were deleted after I arrived.) There were wildflowers on the hillsides, wildflowers in patches on the shoulders of the freeways. The hills over The Grapevine* were green, the hills in Southern California were green—just wonderful, looking the way i think it always should look. (God didn’t ask for my opinion when he designed the seasons in California so I’ll just trust that all is as it should be despite my attitude.)
The freeway system has changed since I was a frequent traveler along that route. Confusing stuff. I used the talking lady, until she told me to leave The Two-Ten and head west. Can’t remember. I just pantsed my arrogant way along, sure I could figure it out. Then The Fifteen became a tollway, not a freeway. WHAT?? So I took The Sixty west, and asked the talking lady to get me to Escondido again.
I ended up on The Two Fifteen (Hunh? What”s that one?) and eventually it fed back into The Fifteen (without my spending a dime other than burning gas that cost $5.99/gallon in Three Rivers), and things became familiar again.
I love this bridge, which we called “Dad’s Favorite Bridge” for awhile (Was he unaware of the Oak Grove Bridge on the Mineral King Road? Nope. “De gustibus non es diputandem” as he used to say.**) It is a beautifully minimalistic bridge, spanning a huge freeway, as you can see. It is south of Fallbrook, in case you are curious.
Driving home, I decided I didn’t need the talking lady, but I asked her to take me to Fresno, just for curiosity’s sake. Yeppers, once again, she tried to force me off The Fifteen (or was it The Two Ten?) and once again I ignored her. I didn’t encounter any tollways nor did I see The Two Fifteen. Boy oh boy, do I ever need an updated map.
I was reminded that in order to stay on The Two Ten, one must continually exit and then merge onto another freeway, each interchange a total constipation of too many cars. I didn’t like it, being much more comfortable on a one-lane unpaved curvy road without stripes or guard rails.
However, Momscar with its 6 cylinder engine was mighty fine in several instances. People say they hate all the shifting in traffic; I never did, but often wished for more ponies under my hood back in the olden days of driving 5-speeds.
This is the first time in my life that I remember seeing so many wildflowers on the Grapevine. It was beautiful! I also had a good audio book, The Tao of Martha by Jen Lancaster (Memoir read by the author is my favorite, but why do people have to cuss so much? Sigh.)
I did finally see why a Tesla “truck” calls itself a truck—I could actually see it has a bed like a real pickup. But the ugly factor just slays me.
I was very eager to get home, and in the second passing lane around the lake, I blew around someone poking along. After getting past, I quickly came to a traffic jam. What?? I could see that cars went all the way across the Horse Creek bridge, coming downhill. What?? Eventually we crawled back into action, passing a slightly wrinkled car sitting on the bed of a tow truck.
Dorothy was right—There’s no place like home (not The Home).
*The Grapevine is what Freeway 5 (“The Five”?) is called where it crosses the Tehachapi Mountains because even until I was a little kid, it was a country road that was very twisty. Now it is multiple lanes, high speed until you catch up to someone (who should keep right) crawling uphill in one of the faster lanes. The summit is closer to Bakersfield than to Southern California—Tejon Pass, 4144’. After the summit, it feels as if we still climb, but who knows? Not me.
** Latin for “it’s useless to argue over matters of taste”.
My plan was to get serious about the remaining five Mineral King oil paintings, to focus, finish, and move on.
I started with Sawtooth, the 6×6” version that Reader Sharon expressed an interest in.
Look at this succession of color mixing. My goal was a light brown, something that might be called “taupe” by the more sophisticated person and “beige” by a regular person.
Done! (You can tell by the fact that I signed it). The plan was to paint the edges when I finished the painting session so as to not waste the paint left on the palette.
Shape check! Upside down forces me to see things more accurately. (This technique presents a problem when working on a mural.)
Then back to front, layer by layer, color by color.
Suddenly it was time to leave to teach drawing lessons down the hill! No edges were painted, so no paintings were fully completed.
Suddenly after 2 months of lollygagging, it seems that my life is full of many extracurriculars at the same time that a bit more work has appeared. So, I will squeeze in little sessions of work as I can.
First, we had to go down the hill to Big Town. As a passenger, I was able to absorb all the scenery. The wildflowers were at their peak, although you can’t tell in these drive-by-shootings.
I got a pass on putting away all the groceries and headed out to paint, just wanting to have both a sense of completion and some forward motion in that little stack of Mineral King oil paintings.
I gave this guy a nose-job, “rhinoplasty”, and now am happy with it. (Terrible light—I’ll scan it when it is dry and maybe remember to show you.)
Moving forward on Farewell Gap, or “Mineral King Family Cabin” as I now am titling this scene: the distant parts first, leading to the foreground (the bottom of the canvas). Fortunately, the colors on the palette were still usable from the previous little painting session.
I painted the edges of this one and the edges of the little Sawtooth.
I did a little bit of tiny brush work on the 6” Honeymoon Cabin. All the greenery is still just blurry blobs, so it isn’t finished yet.
I have 2 more to paint of that popular subject; they can wait for another little painting session, and maybe I can finish this one then.
Ain’t nobody bored around here!
P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, OLDER SISTER! (She reads my blog.)
My favorite form of art is pencil drawing. My favorite subjects to draw are architectural. It is fun to tackle subjects that really require thought, careful design, and a bit of artistic license. It is highly satisfying to turn a vague idea from customers into something better than they envisioned.
A customer presented me with one of those challenges: draw her home and the adjoining “granny flat”. She sent me two photos, one of each.
My first thought was, “Nope, these two together will make a really strange shape for framing.” I tried it anyway, and realized that I’d need to go see the two homes in person to figure out how they are attached.
My inner lazy chick thought that maybe I could convince the customer to skip the granny flat and only choose the main house.
Then I decided to go for the big challenge: a collage type drawing. It’s been while since I did one of these (an entire year—remember this job? And this one?) The two houses don’t fill a standard framing proportion, so I went to my default space filler: oranges.
The customer chose the collage, approved the oranges, and I started the very next day.
This is 14×17”, and even at that size, the upper house (granny flat) has teensy little details. I also complicated the job by choosing hot press watercolor paper, something I used to use exclusively. It is a little bit fuzzy, so details are even more challenging to achieve.
“How long does it take to do a drawing?”
“I dunno. How long is a string?”
I spent about an hour designing, and then it took about 15 minutes for the customer to decide. This one day’s progress was about 6-7 hours of drawing.
I know, I know, I don’t charge enough.
I just raised my prices again, so hush up about that!
Walking Partner and I noticed something different a week or two ago here in Three Rivers: new speed limit signs on a private road.
This is one post. 15 mph heading upstream, 5 mph heading downstream. (This is along the river—could you guess that?)
Here’s another one: This time it was 15 mph going downstream and 5 mph going upstream.
And here is another on the same road: 5 mph both upstream and downstream, but this time there is an explanation for those heading up. “Slow blind curve ahead” could apply to the bulk of the road.
And at this intersection, it is 15 mph regardless of the direction you head.
Never mind. Let’s look at some wildflowers along the walk.
This is the kind of sign I’m used to. Custom. Interesting enough to perhaps cause someone to notice.
Walking Partner and I walk about 3.5 mph, in case you were wondering. We used to walk 4 mph, but we’ve never been this old before.
This post is almost entirely personal. My oldest cousin died, and his family and friends gathered to remember him.
He was almost 12 years old than me. I always looked up to him, my big cousin, sort of intimidating, remote, distant. In spite of not really knowing him, I always loved his wife and felt more related to her and their kids than to him.
In 2012, I was doing an art show in Visalia, and out of the blue, Cousin and Mrs. Cousin appeared. I was shocked speechless—they were so out of context. Mrs. Cousin said I looked at them, and said, “Who are you??”
That’s kind of embarrassing. But we got a great laugh out of it and still are laughing.
A little while later, Cousin asked me to paint something for Mrs. Cousin. I was shocked, because family lore has always been that because of our Scottish heritage, we are all cheap. Ahem. Frugal. But more on that later.
Cousin and I had some great phone conversations, and he bought a pencil drawing that I was working on during one of those long visits. (See? All my friends and family feel sorry for me so they keep me in business.)
We saw each other a couple of more times in person, and Mrs. Cousin asked me to paint something for him as a surprise.
He lived 300 miles away, but I gladly made the drive recently to be with my remaining cousins for less than 24 hours. It was worth it. I decided it was a business trip, because Cousin was a customer, but I was planning to go before I figured out that little added benefit, which would have made his frugal heart proud.
Here is some documentation that it was indeed a business expense to pay my respects to a beloved customer who happened to be my oldest cousin.
About that supposedly Scottish trait of cheapness frugality: Cousin had his DNA done and learned that we have zero Scottishness. Zero! Kind of blew his joke that “We’re Scottish and Irish—we like to drink but don’t want to pay for it”. (I possibly could have some “Scotch” from other family sources, but I won’t know because I’m too paranoid and conspiracy-minded to take that test. I DO have Irish, but I don’t drink. So there.)
The primary colors are red, blue, and yellow. All colors can be mixed from these (except flourescent colors but those colors aren’t relevant to my art). Colors mixed with yellow fade the fastest. This means that green becomes blue, gray becomes lavender, orange becomes pink, and brown turns purple.
I first painted this mural at home in 2008 because I had to practice painting large outdoor pictures with acrylic mural paints. If it was awful, I could just paint it out.
It has needed refreshing several times. Here is the most recent version.
The sky got patchy because I smeared on some of the wrong sky color by accident*; the distant trees turned periwinkle blue; all the greens are grayish blueish green.
Let’s go. Sky first, of course. I though I’d only fix the sky and the rest would be fine. I thought wrong.
Jackson was on standby in case I climbed off the ladder to feed him. I didn’t.
Tucker and Pippin were around but not interested.
The colors are truer now. But the sky probably could use a few clouds, those wispy types that were in the mural earlier. Some other time. . . Instead, I repainted the white border, and then the walk-in door frame, and then the windows of the studio. Way leads on to way. . .
Then I pulled weeds. No photos. But you can look at my studio through the flowers.
Maybe March is my favorite month.
Nope. That terrible time change. I thought we voted to stop the madness.
