Soothing Subject as a Distraction

As I write this post, the Paradise Fire (part of the KNP Complex fire) has been obscuring all views at home and giving me a passive smoker’s cough. It is threatening our cabin in Mineral King (mandatory evacuation) and possibly our home in Three Rivers (voluntary evacuation).

How is a Central California artist to cope?

By painting her favorite type of scenery.*

This was how it looked when I last showed you.

See how the colors look now? This is before I began painting, and it has a funny tint due to the smoky orange light outside.

To help me focus, I flipped it upside down, flipped the photo upside down on the laptop screen, enlarged it tremendously, and proceeded to draw with my paintbrush. The goal was to be as accurate as possible, working back to front in the scenery, and matching the mountains to the best of my ability while squishing the scene onto a canvas of different proportions than the photos. (Trickinology, remember?)

When this is dry, I will add the windmachines, oranges, signature, and edges.

Then maybe I’ll go househunting in Lemon Cove where they don’t have wildfires.

Nope. I am NEVER moving again.

Yeah, I know, “never say never”. Been here almost 23 years and I truly do not want to lose this place or to move.

*along with answering texts, phone calls, and emails from many concerned friends, listening to Mike Rowe’s podcasts, continuing to pray in less than coherent phrases throughout the day, and hanging out with cats.

Firing Up the Painting Machine (AKA Central California Artist)

As of this morning, Monday, September 13, 2021 the entire Mineral King Road is under mandatory evacuation. The Paradise Fire (part of the KNP Complex Fire) is the threat. If you are someone who prays, this would be a good time.

I am your Central California Artist AKA a Painting Machine. At least that is what it feels like when sales are good and there might be a show in the works. This would be a show at a gallery, a solo show, in the big room, not “gallery 2” or as an opening act to another artist. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. Or as Dad used to say, “Time will tell”. 

This one has been collecting dust for awhile. Let’s git ‘er dun. Why not edit out the stump? Because that is a landmark that tells those in the know exactly where this is. (Just past the junction to Mosquito Lake on the Eagle/Mosquito Lakes trail. Or is it before the junction? Never mind, it is in the vicinity).

Never can have too many citrus scenes to suit me.

This one might be called “Looking East II”. (That is a Roman numeral two, not an eleven, which is what the 2 lines between my eyebrows resemble, which is why I have bangs.)

This is the view of Alta Peak that I get when I stand outside on the bench that surrounds my chimney. 

Yokohl Valley area is popular, and I have a good variety of photos with great color and light to choose from. This calls for a little bit trickinology, because the photo’s proportions are not the same as the canvas. But no one cares, and I am developing quite a bit of skill in the trickinology department.

Now, I wonder if the show will come to fruition. Hard to say with the Plague still lurking.

Long Stay in Mineral King

Labor Day is the traditional end of summer. We had a nice long stay in Mineral King leading up to Labor Day, a great time of variety with a sense that there was plenty of time to do everything. (Of course that was a false sense because there is never enough time – new things will always crop up.) 

I painted.

Things definitely slow down as Labor Day approaches. ONE CAR in the parking lot?!

This tree often confounds me when I paint this cabin so I took the opportunity it examine it up close.

I painted some more. What are these pink flowers?

We went exploring.

Look at the blue sky!! And the green ferns! Such bright clean colors after weeks of smoke and months of drought.

The Farmer found a heart-shaped rock.

Trail Guy led us to the old stamp mill site below Timber Gap, where the tram line brought ore from mines on Empire.

We showed our friends where we got married almost 35 years ago.

We saw alpenglow on Empire several evenings.

This is a last hurrah for some flowers at a spring. (Asters and Sierra Gentian, which you can learn from Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names).

Franklin Creek is low, which makes for easy crossing.

The aspens are showing some yellow.

Franklin Creek was perfect for “icing” my knee. (much better, thanks for asking)

Hiking Buddy and I saw this strange sight below the Eagle/Mosquito/White Chief trail. 

These little white daisies (nope, don’t know the name) open in daylight. I photographed them too early in the morning for you to see their charming little faces.

We went for a long hike with neighbors from 3 other cabins. That is a 4-year old, wearing a sparkly skirt with a cat’s tail on the back. She and her 6 year old brother made it the entire 9.5 miles!!

No, really!

It was a very long walk on a trail that is sometimes scary.

This is the place where wildflowers are usually very abundant. On Labor Day weekend after a dry winter, although we had some decent rain during the summer, there is no evidence of any such floral exuberance.

And that is all about Mineral King for a little while. Maybe. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

 

When You Might Have a Show Coming

“You” means me in this context; however, if you are an artist and you might have a show coming, here is what to do.

  1. Ask questions, particularly if the gallery is run by volunteers and is a non-profit enterprise, which means they are always chasing money and need you to do a great job to help them. A. When? B. Solo or group show? C. Pencil drawings, oil paintings, or both? D. All pieces for sale or may I borrow back from previous customers? E. Space for how many pieces?
  2. Take inventory of your existing pieces. This is a tricky piece of business, because I have pieces in 3-5 places that could be moved to the show. However, the show might last 2 months, and the gallery is only open 2 days per week, whereas the other places are busy places of commerce that sell. Besides, how can I count the pieces if they might be sold before it is time to retrieve them? This calls for an estimate.
  3. Estimate how many pieces, and let the gallery know. It is best to make a list, and include sizes and prices, because chances are the gallery will want to know these things. If the gallery doesn’t ask for this information before the show, provide it anyway. They need this information whether or not they know it.
  4. Evaluate your inventory by size and by subject matter. Think about who the audience and customers might be among those who visit. It is usually a matter of geography. For example, if I am showing in Mineral King, I bring pieces of Mineral King. If I am showing to visitors to Sequoia National Park, I bring pieces of Sequoia National Park. Yes, it is this straightforward. (But if the show is in Visalia, I just guess.)
  5. Look through the unfinished pieces to see if anything gathering dust might work in the show, any drawings that are still unframed, any canvases just partially painted.
  6. Decide which subjects or sizes might be lacking, dig through photos and available canvases (because we might not have time to wait for a shipment of new sizes, “we” being the royal we, not a mouse in my pocket), and begin.

Now that is a mystery. Stay tuned. . .

Large Important Commission, Chapter 9

I left the oil painting alone for a week or so, in order to gain distance and objectivity. (Yes, wonky photo, because in spite of this camera’s superiority to its predecessor, the screen is still invisible in the bright sunshine).

Then I switched the photo to black and white, in order to study the contrasts.

This session of study resulted in a list.

  1. Make the snow brighter against sky
  2. The rock shadows on hillside are too dark
  3. Close leaves next to orchards need to be lighter
  4. Tree trunks look too uniform
  5. Too much contrast on wall rocks near books
  6. Need more roses below the wall
  7. Make shadows darker on front row of orchard
  8. Make oranges on the close branches brighter and more yellow
  9. The elephant on Alta Peak and the slope to the left of the elephant need to be fuzzier

All nine items have been addressed. Can we see the difference in this black and white version?

Maybe.

Here is the new color version (also taken in such bright sun, although filtered through a layer of smoke from the fire at Lake Isabella).

Obviously, this painting is going to be a challenge to photograph well.

Just for interest’s sake, here is the sketch (the post about it is here):

It has come a long ways since the beginning, first shown in this post.

And thus we conclude the ongoing saga of The Large Important Commission Oil Painting.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the books need to be less jarring. On the other hand, maybe they are supposed to pop out of the painting because it is for the Tulare County Library (Woodlake branch).

Oil Paintings Sold in July (Have you seen these??)

Is this going to be a regular feature of the blog? I hope so.

These are the paintings that sold in July. Did I show you these yet? I can’t find an answer to this question, so if you have seen this, consider it a rerun, because it is a rerun, unless it isn’t.

Good Grief Charlie Brown.

Oil Paintings Sold in August

This is Labor Day, so this is about some completed labors. Today I will share some oil paintings of Mineral King that sold as of mid-August at the Silver City Resort/Store.

I can’t decide if the sales are unusually high, or if I am simply thrilled because much of life seems less than thrilling these days. So, in the spirit of celebrating things for which to be thankful, rejoice with me.

Maybe it is showing off. Nah. I am just trying to be businesslike, reminding you all that:

I use pencils, oil paint, and murals to create art that you can understand of places and things you love for prices that won’t scare you.

Mineral King: Feet in the Water.

Two friends and I began our visit by stopping at Atwell Mill (campground closed again this year, due to the presence of a Fisher Cat) and walking down to the East Fork of the Kaweah River. There were about 1/2 dozen tree messes, AKA “tree failures” in trail crew lingo. You can see the East Fork and a painting of it in 2015 here.

Looking straight up gave us the visual relief of a blue sky.

This was our destination.

We climbed above the bridge to put our feet in the water.

The next day we went to a different bridge, where we put our feet in the water again. Normally I blow past this area on my way somewhere else, but this time it was the actually destination so there was time to contemplate matters of consequence, or, in modern lingo, “chill”. Spending time there, we looked up to see a weird tree formation.

We also meandered down the Nature Trail a bit (but not to put our feet in the water this time).

On our last day together, we headed another direction where there was no bridge. Feet in the water was the only way to get to the other side where we spotted a few wildflowers. Smoke, slow water, but the grasses were still green.

Explorer’s Gentian is one of the good things about my least favorite month.

But Wait! There’s More!

More oil paintings, finished and drying. Have a look at the process. The first one is a commission, the second is just because.

Oops. I forgot to take in-progress photos.

This one has more steps. You already saw the completed version in the Friday post about Mineral King, because this is a Mineral King oil painting, and I delivered it to the Silver City Store. (It could even be sold by now.)

I was very thankful to be able to find the original photo on the computer so I could enlarge to see what the mess of rocks in the stream truly looked like. 

Sawtooth as it looks (okay, I admit to slightly enhancing it) from the Nature Trail and the now famous Alpenglow on Farewell Gap, a commission delivered a few days ago.

“Famous”? Okay, I admit to slightly enhancing the claim.

Large Important Commission, Chapter 8

Happy Birthday, SD, DV, MW, and RT!

Is Chapter 8 the final chapter? Probably not. This is so important (and has no deadline) that I want to spend time studying it, mulling it over, adding little touches, and taking it to the nth degree. This is one way I learned to paint when I took 1/2 a semester at the local junior college back in 2006 until I got sick of the commute and the rap “music” and the fact that the class was supposed to be in photorealism but the professor dismissed photorealism as “smoke and mirrors”, saying anyone could learn the tricks, but then he didn’t teach any.

Never mind. Where were we?

I started the roses in the foreground and really like the way they glow against the color of the road behind them.

This looks weird: one trick to know if a painting has enough contrast is to look at it in black and white. I will do this with the entire painting before declaring it finished, but for now I wanted to appreciate the roses and rock wall.

The rose garden grew, and it was very satisfying. (deer don’t eat roses in an oil paint rose garden).

Hey! There are books on the wall! Yeppers, it is for the library. They look better than this now, but I didn’t photograph them again for you. (No, I will NOT be putting titles on them!)

Now what are you doing, Central California Artist?

Glad you asked – I am painting the edges.

It is hanging to dry: look how it changes depending on the time of day it is photographed. When I decide to be really and truly finished, I will photograph it outdoors in the sunlight.