More on the Gift Exchange

As a thank you gift for a gift of oil paints, brushes, and an easel, I am painting a Karmann Ghia.

No, not painting a car, making an oil painting of a Karmann Ghia.

This is for a former drawing student, and because my students and I always tell each other the truth about our art, I asked him to tell me if the painting was finished. 

In the photo he sent to me, there was a piece of chrome missing from the door. I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, so I took a close up photo of the door on the painting to ask.

He replied with another photo of the car. (I deleted it before remembering that you might want to see it.) 

Aha! I fixed the painting.

This received approval, but I told him that I think oil paint is so wobbly compared to pencil. It is. The canvas has texture, the paint doesn’t often flow smoothly, and the brush hairs go rogue. But I keep trying to make my paintings look as good up close as they do from the back of a fast horse (or across the room).

I touched up the sky, brought the painting into the house to dry, and then scanned it.

Karmann Ghia, 8×8″, private collection

Another one of my drawing students asked me why I painted it so small. BECAUSE IT IS FREE! Besides, when you give someone a piece of art, it isn’t wise to assume they will love it as much as you do or that they might have space for something large.

Juxtaposition

Isn’t that a lovely word? I love the juxtaposition of agriculture, especially citrus, against foothills. It wasn’t until I looked at my entire body of work that I realized this subject wasn’t adequately represented.

This painting of Lemon Cove is still in progress, an afterthought to my upcoming art show, Still Here, coming to Arts Visalia for the month of April. 

This last photo was taken after dark, when I was painting using a light. I wonder how the color will look in daylight. 

Meanwhile, I recently spent a bit of time with a friend in Orange Cove, another beautiful area of the Central Valley where citrus meets the foothills.

Orange Cove is in Fresno County, so I won’t be hustling to make any paintings from these pictures for the upcoming show. Its focus will be Tulare County, because I am STILL HERE!!

Gift Exchange

One of my long-time drawing students took as many art classes as he could cram in for several years at the local junior college. (Sorry, not sorry – “community college”) He completely immersed himself in art until suddenly, he was finished. Done. His interests moved into mechanical subjects, and currently he is immersing himself in all things automotive.

A few weeks ago he asked me if I’d like to have his oil painting supplies. REALLY??  Yes, please! What a generous gift!

So, I decided to paint a gift for him. 

It isn’t quite finished because it needs me to draw with my paintbrush in order to reach the level of detail to do justice to his Karmann Ghia.

Yes, I still have paintings to finish for my upcoming show, Still Here. 

But, in spite of those necessary paintings for the show, I am still. . .

. . .using pencils, oil paint, and murals to make art that people can understand of places and things they love.

Cowboy Logic Applied

I was tempted to work on the Mineral King paintings, but cowboy logic steered me toward finishing the ones with the closer deadline (April, Still Here, an exhibition at Arts Visalia).
This new one (not the Mineral King ones – were you paying attention to the first paragraph?) is 8×16″, a new shape and size for me to paint. It is lacking some detail, a signature, and paint on the edges. 

This painting is almost finished. Here are three stages:

It lacks a couple of wind machines, some oranges, a signature, and paint on the edges.

This one will take several more layers because I am covering over some old painting on this canvas, which a friend kindly brought to me from a yard sale.

Because these 3 new pieces were going well, I decided to try a 4th new one. A realtor friend advertised a Springville ranch with a photo so beautiful that I asked him if he could connect me with the photographer for permission to paint. The photographer replied to me directly in the affirmative.

Rose-colored glasses might help you see the potential. (That’s just a figure of speech.)

You can see that I am really taken with scenes that combine foothills and agriculture. I feel certain that a cowboy would agree with the appeal of these paintings.

 

February Was Too Short

My first favorite month is too short. I have more thoughts and photos to share than we had days on the calendar. Because it is so beautiful, it is hard to keep my feet planted in front of the easels. When Trail Guy asked me if I wanted to go for a walk in the middle of the day, I said yes.

The wildflowers have begun. (Yes, I am fully aware that the first photo is daffodils; thank you for your concern over a potential error on my part.)

SCARLET MONKEY FLOWER?!? I’ve only seen this one other time. It was along the Mineral King Road, maybe halfway up, in July 2012. (Yes, it was a memorable sighting, but I had to look up the date.) It was much smaller than this version.

Popcorn and fiddleneck are standard early season wildflowers. They are sort of boring, except when they first appear, a harbinger of the carnival ahead.

8 Things Learned in February

  1. It is possible to teach drawing or at least help established drawing students via email.
    “Rocky”, a pencil drawing by my anonymous student AKA “C”
  2. Paul Buxman is an artist from Dinuba here in Tulare County. He is also a farmer, and the subjects he chooses really appeal to me, although his style does not. He is a very accomplished painter, and speaks with humble authority about living and painting this area. We have never met, although I have read and heard about him for years. There is a great interview with him on the Arts Visalia page here.
  3. Blog reader and virtual friend Marjie sent me a recipe for persimmon bars when she learned that I don’t like persimmon cookies. I cut the sugar in half, and they were excellent! Who knew? I usually reduce the sugar when I bake by 1/4 or 1/3. I wonder if I can slash it even further, but this will have to wait until next persimmon season.
  4. Vinyl Composition Tile (VCT) used to be cheap flooring; now it is expensive, and there are very few solid colors to choose from. Several, nay, many cracked tiles in my navy and white checkered kitchen floor need replacing, but navy is discontinued. I suggested to the flooring expert that I just use red and let it be a random pattern. He said, “We call that a ‘scatter pattern'”; I said, “WAIT! It can’t have a name, because I just invented it!”
  5. More flooring news: if you have a cement slab foundation, it might make alkali pebbles beneath your linoleum or VCT. These pebbles will grow like stalagmites, lifting, cracking, and making holes in your flooring material. You cannot prevent this. Twenty-two years is considered a good long run. There will be no scatter pattern in my kitchen; there will need to be an entirely new floor, and it will not be VCT this time.
  6. I found a gardening blog by Anne Wareham who wrote a book called “The Bad Tempered Gardener”. She lives in Wales and keeps a garden that people pay to visit, along with writing for gardening magazines. I wonder if anything I read by her will translate to the Central Valley of California. . . prolly not. Too bad her book isn’t in our county library. Her subtle humor in her blog posts and photo captions feel very comfortable to me. An added bonus: she used to be a knitter – how does one stop being a knitter??
  7. Most of the murals in Exeter have hidden items. One of the earlier ones was painted by a friend of mine from high school, and he hid a Monopoly shoe. A few years ago, I could not find it so I emailed him for help. He couldn’t remember where it was either, and the brochures from the Exeter Chamber of Commerce didn’t even mention it. When my cousins visited a couple of weeks ago, together we walked the murals, looking for hidden items. Suddenly, I saw it! It is quite faded, but it is still vaguely visible in the Waterman mural.
  8. It is possible to paint on concrete stepping stones. I used some leftover exterior white paint for 2 primer coats, and then 2 coats of exterior latex for the brighter colors. It was easier than doing tile mosaics, easier than pouring wet cement into molds and tapping in some tchotchkes, and will be easier to maintain.

Odd Job Completed

As a working artist, I seem to attract odd art-related jobs. Each one is a challenge, usually quite fun to figure out. This odd job of painted stepping stones was completed for a vacation rental where I occasionally help with the yardening.

The colored stepping stones lead through the front yard around to the playset, absent in the photo above, present in the photo below.(Not magical – just unbuilt, and then built.)  And in case you are wondering, the purple blooming shrub is Germander. Looks fabulous now, looks scrappy in the summer. The shrubs in this front yard take turns looking good.

A Few More New Oil Paintings

When I thought through the oil paintings that are ready for the upcoming show, Still Here, for April at Arts Visalia, I realized there were a few more subjects that will add to the mix. Round it out. Complete it. 

These are looking scrappy and rough, as paintings do while in progress. This isn’t a very satisfying step in the painting process; hence, the odd job kept pulling me away from the easel. But with a looming deadline (doesn’t that sound ominous?? It doesn’t truly feel that way), I will get back to these paintings and see if I can finish them for the show. They are 16×20″, 8×16″, and 6×18″, all manageable sizes.

P.S. Hi Tucker. You’ve already been fed three times – thank you for just sitting with me instead of begging.

Odd Job

Sometimes I help my friend with her vacation rentals, specifically in the yards and gardens. (What is the difference? “Garden” sounds nicer, but when I do the yardwork, I think of it as “yardening”.) 

Recently we laid some fake grass (“artificial turf” is the real name) for a place to put up a children’s play set. We are figuring out how to conceal the edges, putting down weed barrier and planting all sorts of things around the “grass”. 

Next, we will add stepping stones to lead from the front of the house to the side area with the playset (remember when there were monkey-bars, swings, slides, and merry-go-rounds, all separate pieces of equipment, with asphalt beneath? How did we survive such barbarism??)

Because we want it to be enticing to kids, we want stepping stones that are inviting. After kicking around all sorts of ideas, we chose painted cement circles. This was a frugal decision, because we are careful with the home owner’s money.

Trail Guy set up a temporary table for painting the stepping stones in the sunshine.

I have many gallons of paint for a primer coat.

The paint dried fast, so I was able to put two coats on within an hour and a half.

My friend and I bought small cans of blue, red, and yellow so I can mix many colors. We learned that with small cans, the strongest brightest colors aren’t possible. All the tint needed to make the colors bright would cause a little can to overflow. So, we got the brightest primary colors that the hardware store could mix for us.

As a professed color junkie, I just dove into the colors. Our ideas were many, but thinking about the time involved, we settled on one solid step per color, and the rest could be decorated a little more elaborately.

I began with the first design, an obvious idea for February 14, the day I painted.

Then I just kept going. I painted the 6 very solidly, and messed around with blending colors on top of the other 6. It wasn’t particularly successful, but it was a fun way to experiment and get a base coat on the white primer.

This is really fun. When we figure out how to decorate the non-solids, I hope I remember to photograph them and blog about it. And if they look good leading through the “garden” to the “grass”, I might show you that too.

It might be a bit of an odd job, but I continue to. . .

make art people can understand of places and things they love for prices that won’t scare them.

P.S. Is this art??

New Mineral King Paintings

Take a deep calming breath. There are no new ones yet, but “Starting New Mineral King Oil Paintings” is too long a title. However, I have fired up the Mineral King Painting Machine (that is a particular part of my brain that gets a little time off in winter).

First, I read through my lists of what sold, what remains, what subjects and sizes are missing. (That step isn’t one that I can photograph for you.)

Then I decide on canvas sizes, look through my photos, and make decisions. Last year more medium sized paintings sold than small ones. I have plenty of small ones remaining, so the sizes I’ll be painting now are 8×8″, 10×10″, and 6×18″. “Medium”? In my world, yes, these are medium sizes. (This step was tricky in that I had to figure out what to do with my large oil paintings that are still wet in order to use the table.)

There are many ways to start oil paintings. I chose a haphazard semi-lazy just-draw-it-on-the-canvas method. I don’t have a lot of hustle right now – just plodding forward is getting the job done. (More coffee? Start eating sugar again? Nah.)

Scribble scribble, dab, pick any color, just do something.

That’s a decent start. 

Can I take a break now? A little recess, perhaps? Maybe I’ll go weed my baby poppies, because I love February.