Eight Things I Learned in November

  1. Pineapple quince is good for baking like apples, and eaten fresh it is like a green pear but very dry. (Something is telling me I might have learned and forgotten this one before!) I didn’t pick one – only saw them, took a photo, and asked The Farmer, who supplied me with this answer.
  2. Want to know why painters wear white? There are several reasons, including tradition. It was the official color of the painters union, is the base color of almost all paints (couldn’t be the base of the dark colors, could it?? of course not!), is cooler in the heat, signifies to others a professional appearance and approach to work, and shows all the layers of work done. Finally, if you see people wearing white, it might make you careful about what you touch.
  3. What is BCE and why instead of BC? BC means before Christ; BCE is the newer way of indicating time and stands for Before Common Era. (You can probably infer the reason for the push to change the old designations). 
  4. In the same vein, AD means Anno Domini, which is Latin for “year of our Lord”; it is now called CE for Common Era. This implies there will be another era ahead – will it be called UE for Uncommon Era?
  5. A few months ago, I learned that the dial tone on the phone is F#. Being a curious person, I decided to test it. IT ISN’T F#!  It is a flat A – not A-flat (can’t find the symbol for the musical flat sign on my computer keyboard – maybe I will learn that next month).
  6. It isn’t wise to schedule a blog post series during an active art show. I wrote the chapters of “How I Designed a Logo” before IMAGES OF HOME opened, scheduled it ahead to run on consecutive days, and then my show happened with many fun things to show and tell. Now I keep interrupting the flow of “How I Designed a Logo”, and it dilutes the impact of this large and important (to me and D-Bar-J) custom job. I hope you are enjoying the series despite the start-and-stop nature.
  7. I lowered the price on The Cabins of Wilsonia from $50 to $40; the sales picked up right away! Is this because the website store page has a tag on it that reads “Sale!“? If I knew this, maybe I’d drop all my prices by a dime or a dollar and mark it as being “on sale”. But alas, I didn’t learn anything solid other than lowering the price increased the sales.
  8. Badgers have a white stripe on their heads. I’ve never seen a badger but my UPS driver saw one dead on the side of the road near Kaweah Oaks Preserve, took a picture and showed me.

Did you learn anything in November? (Does anyone besides me keep track?)

How I Designed a Logo, Chapter 7

My customers chose this version of their logo.

Now, it was time to do the original drawing to customize the logo for them.

They requested color, but before I added it to the drawing, I put it into the logo instead of the place holder.

Getting there, but more polishing and adjusting ahead. Logo design is tricky stuff, and there has to be clear communication between me and the customers in order to get it just right for them.

To be continued. . .

Exploring the End of North Fork Drive

Trail Guy, The Farmer, Hiking Buddy and I went on a bit of an adventure. We had all been here are various times in our lives, but never after a fire. The upper end of North Fork Drive had borate (pink fire retardant) sprayed on both sides of the road, the views were much wider than before with so much brush burned out, and it was much more apparent than before how very steep the drop-off is to the river.

After a tail-gate lunch, we headed across the creek and up a dirt road to see how things looked.

This road was widened by bulldozers to create a firebreak. The area definitely burned, but the October rains and the north-facing slopes together have allowed green to begin emerging.

Hey -what is that?

Just a couple of little underground rooms, one with a solid concrete door.

Look – we crossed a bridge to peek into the little rooms – I didn’t notice at the time.

This road is just going up and up and up and up. . . nothing looks different. Let’s go back and take the fork to the right. But what is this white stuff? Ash. A tree on the ground burned and we are looking at the branching pattern left behind.

This was probably covered in a variety of shrubs. I am loving the green here. We headed over to a big flat area, known as Grunigen’s Flat, a former homestead or cattle ranch or commune or something.

Because it all burned, this impressive rock wall shows up.

We followed the wall, which followed the creek. All this chiseled quarried stone, laid without mortar, for what end?

Ugh. Fire. I kept expecting to come to a granite slab with Indian grind-holes. Sure enough, we did, but I didn’t photograph it. I was too absorbed in the sycamores, stone wall, and the green.

The ground was weird like this all over – is this some sort of fire-heave effect?? I don’t think it was a gopher evacuation camp.

The Farmer did a bit of searching and learned that the wall was built in the ’30s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, specifically the Yucca CCC Camp. Not sure what purpose it served other than providing work. If I didn’t have other things going on, I might look it up. But sometimes, a wall is just a wall, and a stone wall this aesthetically pleasing is good enough for this Central California artist for now.

Oil Painting With Friends

Today I will be at Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery from 11-3, oil painting with friends. You are welcome to stop by!

Why will I be there when I could be painting at home? 

  1. My friends don’t have as much experience in oil painting as I do, so I can help them.
  2. Sometimes it is fun to paint with friends instead of painting alone at home.
  3. I HAVE A SHOW HANGING AT THE GALLERY WITH MY ART FOR SALE!

I might bring this trail painting or maybe a stack of Sawtooth paintings.


How I Designed a Logo, Chapter 6

I sent 3 rough-drawn logo options to my customers, and they chose this one for me to refine.

I downloaded the typeface that was closest to this, and then began manipulating it to fit around the circle. We began talking about what to do with “Orchards, Inc.”, whether or not to include it, how to make it look good.


Which one did they choose? Stay tuned. . .

How I Designed a Logo, Chapter 5

After looking at Western typestyles, sketching out some ideas, and turning a pencil drawing of a citrus scene into a circle, I began refining the five design ideas.

Time to mull it over, chose three, and show the customers. I sent the first three and scrapped the other two. They might have been workable, but enough already!

To be continued. . .

 

Department of Redundancy Dept.

I have become a (temporary) Sawtooth painting factory.

First, sky and clouds on all three.

Second, Sawtooth on all three.

Third, trees on distant ridges on all three.

Fourth, work on the distant trees that are somewhat distinct.

Fifth, scribble in some layers of green on all three, because it is getting too dark to see, there is green paint on the palette that can be used to add another layer to the canvases, and that’s all I can take today of the repetition of these custom Mineral King oil paintings. 

Next painting session: figure out the confusing rocks in the stream on one painting, and then use it as a guide for the other two. This will be more effective than repeating a rock three times and then realizing it is in the wrong place. Who cares if a rock is in the wrong place? If it makes the stream flow look unbelievable, all three customers might care.

What’s Happening Now

The first painting to sell at IMAGES OF HOME was Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

To clarify the title for you: Sunnypoint was the name of a campground in Mineral King, closed by the Forest Service some time before 1978. The Nature Trail runs through it, and this view is how I wished it actually looked. Instead, Black Wolf Falls isn’t fully visible in this exact position, and Sawtooth only shows as a little point. Nonetheless, this is what we remember when we think of those 2 places, along with a full and curving stream. “We”? That would be me, myself, I, and the 4 people who bought this painting.

How can 4 people buy the same painting??

I’m glad you asked. When Person #2 said, “Oh, wow, I would love that but it is sold!”, I replied with, “I can paint it again for you.” 

This happened 3 times after the first sale.

This is what is happening now:

The top one is 16×20″; the bottom two are 11×14″.

This is also happening now:

I’ll ‘splain these to you later.  Meanwhile, my show IMAGES OF HOME is also happening now at the Courthouse Gallery in Exeter.

How I Designed a Logo, Chapter 4

After evaluating the sketchy ideas, I worked on the idea for a drawing. Because I have been drawing orange groves and citrus for most of my career, there were several token drawings to use as a place holder. This one seemed appropriate, because I was able to turn it into a circle.

This is what is called a placeholder in design. It serves the purpose of showing what might be able to work before the actual piece has been designed.

Photoshop Junior (actually Photoshop Elements) provided the tools to circularize the drawing. That means I cropped it into a circle, but “circularize” sounded good.

 

SHOW up now:

Images of Home

Exeter Courthouse Gallery, 125 South B Street

November 14 – January ?, 2022

Hours – Saturday,Sunday, Noon-4 p.m.