Finishing Tasks in the Painting Workshop

The reason I refer to “the painting workshop” instead of “the studio” is because I paint in a different building than where I draw. The drawing studio came first, and when I began oil painting on March 8, 2006, it was imperative to keep that mess away from my pencil drawings. It still is imperative; the operative word here is “mess”.

After spending several weeks working on large-ish (large for me means it won’t fit on my flatbed scanner) paintings, there were many little tasks to complete. Each painting needed a title and inventory # on the back, hardware for hanging, a signature, the edges to be painted, and a good photograph.

For these larger paintings, I put them outside on an easel in the sunshine, and then do my level best to take photos with my PHD* camera, which has a screen that doesn’t show up in bright sunshine. Operative word here is “level” —try to hold a tiny camera perfectly parallel with a painting when you can’t see the screen.

Someday I might buy a grownup camera again, but one of my guiding principles in life is “The more stuff I own, the more stuff breaks” (and needs maintenance, storage, cleaning, battery charging, and for Pete’s sake and for crying out loud, STOP GETTING LOST ALREADY!) My PHD is doing fine for now, so I’ll just push onward. Thanks to Photoshop Jr., I can make this work.

Trail Guy came into the workshop with a maintenance-man sort of aura, so I told him that it was time to reupholster my chair again. The duct tape from the last reupholstery session was no longer satisfactory, so he used gorilla tape this time. Classy, eh? The stool came from an abandoned artist studio where some jerk refinanced his place, then took the money and ran. Some friends of mine bought the property from the bank, and I had the good fortune to comb through and claim what I needed. Back then I stood to paint, but thought it would be a useful stool in the workshop. Now I sit more often (stupid peripheral neuropathy).

Tomorrow I’ll show you a few more finishing tasks.

*Press Here, Dummy

Sold in Spring

Learned in May? Who had time to learn anything when I was painting like a machine and paintings were selling at warp speed. Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. It only felt like warp speed (nope, no idea what that actually means) compared to a s l o w s l o w s l o w winter.

That was really fun. People love to ask where artists get their inspiration. I get mine from real life, the beautiful things and moments. People don’t often ask where artists get their motivation. Mine comes from sales. It validates me, gives me the oompf to keep painting when people give me green pieces of paper with dead presidents faces on them. Those pieces of paper are hard to come by, so I feel very honored when someone thinks my work is worth it.

Nine Things Learned in May

In the lengthy month of May (why does 31 days feel so much longer than 30?) I spent time finding interesting things to ponder on the interwebs along with painting, planting native plants at my church, drawing a map, and getting used to the two-home rhythms of summer. I also took in the last wildflowers of spring in my neighborhood of Three Rivers.

    1. Have you heard of the Scottish term “hurkle durkle”? It is explained here in this blog post on Optimistic Musings of a Pessimist. (Hi, Elisabeth!) It’s a verb that means to lie in bed in the morning until you feel like getting up.

    2. My internet friend Elisabeth posted a list of the Five Best Beaches in Nova Scotia. Holy guacamole, good thing it is far away or the entire world would want to live there. Her photos! The beaches! (Thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not covet…)

    3. A friend offered use of his car when he learned of Fernando’s terminal diagnosis. LOOK AT THIS BABY!! (I know it’s not a Honda Accord.) I declined, because Fernando is still running just fine for the shortish distances in my life. What a generous and fabulous friend. . . who gets to have people like this in their lives??

    4. Doing hard things and all the varieties of ways to incorporate this into everyday life, along with the reasons for doing these—great food for thought from the blog This Evergreen Home. It follows the same line of thinking as the book The Comfort Crisis, which I bought and read a year or two ago (and promptly gave away or lost). Still not interested in jumping into cold water or taking cold showers.

    5. While we are talking about websites, there is an enormous quantity of wisdom on This Evergreen Life. Great fodder for introspection and conversation. . . shhhh, I need to think. Here is an example: “[Minimalism] insists that the cheapest item is the one you never purchase, the most efficient storage system is deletion, and the best bargain is time reclaimed when you no longer have to manage mountains of things.”

    6. A dear friend has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (Who was Parkinson? Poor guy. . .) Her Movement Specialist Neurologist (that’s a medical specialty?) told her, “exercise is your medicine.” People with PD who exercise daily for 30 minutes at 80% of their maximum heart rate have significantly fewer symptoms and thus need less pharmaceuticals.

    7. Ever heard of “money dials”? Ramit Sethi is a money guy who has coined this term. He lists the 10 most common “money dials” to help you find where you are most likely to spend any extra money; when you figure it out, you can turn the dial all the way up. (Why??)

    8. I had a one-year follow-up appointment in Santa Barbara for this dadgum peripheral neuropathy. After some thought, I realized that the doc would confirm that yes, I still have it (well, duh, that is why my feet are still numb, I can’t comfortably wear any shoes except Crocs, and they really start hurting if I walk farther than 4 miles), and she’d remind me that there is no cure but to watch the prediabetes, which she says can cause neuropathy (to which my local doc says baloney). I emailed the SB doc to see if an appointment was necessary, she confirmed my line of thinking. and I cancelled the appointment. (SHE REPLIED TO THE MESSAGE!!) The learning there is to THINK and ASK.

    9. One final realization came to me in May: people begin a physical decline in their 60s. Look at the list of things happening to my friends in first decade of the esses: cancer, diabetes, prediabetes, prolapsed body parts, prostate cancer, Parkinson’s Disease, early onset Alzheimer’s, bad knees, ruined shoulders, DeQuervain’s tenosynovitis, and yes, peripheral neuropathy. On top of that, we all have friends in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who need help but often won’t admit it. The ones that do admit it make it easier on those around them and have an easier time themselves.

    Well. That was fun.

    Mineral King—the Season has Begun

    For those new to my blog, Mineral King is an area of Sequoia National Park where I spend copious amounts of time in the summer. Next Friday I will provide a more in depth explanation.

    Today’s post is a long one. You’ve been warned. . .

    The road is under construction, so it is a mess, and there is a schedule to follow. This is what we saw at the bottom of the road.

    We stopped by Silver City to deliver paintings and cards.

    I’m given quite a bit of leeway in placing the pieces and actually took my own nails, easels, and hammer.

    That’s my design on the tee shirt in the background.
    This is that tall narrow space for which I paint something tall and narrow each season.
    The most popular subject—sold a 6×6” version of it on the weekend.

    Shortly after arriving at the cabin, we headed back to a friend’s cabin with an enormous tree blocking her driveway. The men didn’t have big enough chainsaws but eliminated some parts to create a path around, carried some of her gear up to the cabin for her, and supplied a hand-truck so she could get things back down to her car later. “Did you see Tracy’s tree?” was a question we heard many times over our stay.

    She had some good flowers in her driveway.

    Very very tiny unknowns.
    Five spot is the name of these cuties. Those leaves in the center look like a cactus. What in the world??

    Hiking Buddy and I hoofed it back up the road to our cabins.

    I had a nice afternoon of watching the daffodils and untangling yarn from a sweater that fit me wrong.

    Our after-dinner walk was beautiful, but my camera is fairly inadequate for this sort of lighting.

    However, it is perfectly fine for this sort.

    The next day was busy for the men as they assisted cabin neighbors in various opening tasks. However, I had time to continue watching daffodils bloom.

    Hiking Buddy and I ventured up to Spring Creek to see if the bridge had been installed yet. Nope.

    When the men were available, we took a walk together.

    Some of the cottonwoods had quite a few broken branches, and one was swinging precariously. The guys tried to dislodge the widow-maker, but it survived (and so did the guys—no widows were made.)

    Crystal Creek is running well, very wide and shallow (sort of like Facebook).

    There was more time in the afternoon for unraveling that sweater and watching the daffodils.

    More walks (I am unsure about hiking with my peripheral neuropathy this year. . . more will be revealed, but for now, walks are fine with me.)

    These are the tiniest blue lips I’ve ever seen! All I had so that you can appreciate the size is this chapstick (okay, Carmex, but who knows what that is?) in my pocket.

    It was chilly in the evenings so we gathered with friends around this ring of fire. (Someone besides me was wearing Crocs—mine show at the bottom).

    Look at the daffodils just 3 days later. Yellow wildflowers are a little bit boring to me, but daffodils are neither wild nor boring.

    It wasn’t a hot weekend, and the drive down was quite beautiful. Almost all the wildflowers were yellow, and I wasn’t bored. Bush poppy, flannel bush, blazing star, monkey flowers—all yellow. The bush poppies are prolific and abundant. I didn’t photograph the areas where they cover the hillside, because it isn’t prudent to stop the Botmobile on steep slopes or blind corners or when the road is just one lane or if someone is on our six and there is no turnout.

    The lupine are hanging on too.

    Thus we conclude our very long post about Mineral King. Next week I will show some Mineral King art (because this is my business blog and I came here to earn a living—any questions?) and explain for my new far-away friends a little bit about this place we locals love so dearly.

    Finishing Two More Oil Paintings

    This painting has been on hold for many months. Finally, I felt able to finish it. After working on Sawtooth #66 with the water, and Sawtooth #65 with all the made up things, this suddenly felt quite manageable.

    Marble Fork Bridge, 16×20, needs to dry, be photographed and varnished, all for the solo show in Tulare in August.

    Success breeds confidence. Let’s paint a sunset at the beach.

    First, I mixed a bunch of sunset colors, trying to be close to the colors on the several photos while knowing that the sunset had changed continually while we sat and watched (and photographed) it.

    The 16×20” canvas had a basic first layer but needed refinement on the rock shape on the left. That’s Morro Rock in Morro Bay, in case you are curious.

    I actually finished this painting of a sunset at Morro Rock, but the mosquitoes were buzzing and I was hungry too. So I didn’t take a final photo for you. After it dries, I’ll try to remember to show you the finished product. Or, you might have to come to the solo show in Tulare in August (if I forget to show you, or even if I do, because remember, everything looks better in person except celebrities.)

    Gittin’ ‘er dun at the Easel

    This painting had the tightest deadline of all the paintings in progress. After a day of doing many non-painting projects, I got a day to paint uninterrupted (except for Jackson).

    The edges are painted. It needed to dry, be signed, get photographed, varnished and get rewired from its previous iteration as a horizontal painting.

    This is Sawtooth #66, 12×24”, oil on wrapped canvas, $650, located at the Silver City Resort, 4 miles below Mineral King.

    Too Busy to Paint

    In the mornings I meet my friend and her cat so we can power up a steep road in the neighborhood.

    Some mornings there are turkeys yelling in the middle of the road.

    None of this keeps me too busy to paint. I just wanted you to see these pictures.

    There is a large project at my church right now. It has been occupying a lot of space in my mind, figuring out what to do and how to do it.

    This needs plants, many many many plants. How many? I don’t know.

    Fortunately, I know someone who knows. Melanie Keeley has a native plant nursery in Three Rivers and she is a genius expert botanist. (Her nursery is Alta Vista—call or email for an appointment.)

    First I had to make gopher baskets. It wasn’t easy, but I had help. We only bled a little bit.

    Six or seven friends met Melanie at church one morning. She chose and brought 35 plants, placed them, and instructed us in the planting requirements. Some didn’t need gopher baskets, and some that did needed a hole snipped in the center of the bottom. Weird. Maybe gophers don’t bite tap roots.

    After we finished planting and hand watering, we returned in the afternoon to cover it all with mulch. There wasn’t enough, but whatever got spread was an improvement.

    Then two guys set up a watering system. Seeing them (lower right side of the landscaped area) in this poorly photoshopped shot gives you an idea of the scale of the project.

    In addition to working on the planting project, I repainted a cabin sign.

    Then I started on a design for embroidered caps for my friend to sell at her store, Stem & Stone in Three Rivers. (The link is a Facebook page, so I can’t open it, but maybe you can.)

    There are two versions here because the embroiderer charges by the stitch count, and we don’t know what the different prices might turn out to be, so we want options.

    After she approved these two arrangements, I used colored pencils and Photoshop to turn these into useful designs. (The one on the left isn’t showing completely here.)

    She’s not in a big rush. That’s good, because I need to design a ranch map and get some paintings finished.

    I love the variety in my job and life!

    Back to the Sawtooths

    The tall narrow (12×24”) oil painting of Sawtooth has a deadline. There is a narrow but visible spot in the Silver City Store where I hang a tall narrow Mineral King painting each summer. Last summer I took up a tall and narrow painting of that classic Mineral King view on Memorial Day weekend. Somewhat flippantly I told the manager the price, adding “just on the off chance that it sells”, because usually only the suitcase-sized paintings sell.

    It sold that weekend.

    So, let’s not shilly-shally, hmmm?

    The river and rocks are kind of too small to see in the 4×6” snapshot. I make up a lot of stuff too, which sometimes is easy and other times requires great thought.

    “Make stuff up”?? Make up a lot of stuff! The idea is believability.

    The great cover-up almost got finished on the day that the above progress was achieved.

    Sawtooth #65,24×30”, $2000 (still drying)

    I want to mull it over for a while. It is destined for the solo show at the Heritage Gallery in Tulare, the show titled “Around Here. . . and Sometimes a Little Farther”. Unless you want to buy it first.

    Ready for Summer, Professionally Speaking

    The store, no, the employees at the Silver City Resort do their best to sell my paintings every summer. Sometimes they are closed due to pandemics, fires, floods, ultra heavy winters, or ruined roads. But we nevah nevah nevah give up.

    There are about five Mineral King paintings at the Mural Gallery and Gift Shop in Exeter which I will retrieve today to take up the hill for Memorial Day weekend, which is early this year. Historically Memorial Day was May 31 until most holidays got Mondayized to become 3-day weekends when people would be the least interrupted and have chunks of time to do things that rarely have anything to do with the date which gave the privilege of time off.

    I looked over the paintings, evaluating sizes and subjects, and figured out that five more would probably be adequate until August. Meanwhile I need to concentrate on getting a few more large paintings ready for the solo show, also August.

    Stop talking, Central California Artist, and show us your paintings!

    Sawtooth #63, 8×8″

    Sawtooth #64, 8×10″
    Honeymoon Cabin #49, 6×12
    Mineral King Family Cabin
    Mineral King Trail, 8×8″

    Every year it is a by-guess-and-by-golly to figure out which subjects in which shapes and sizes to paint. Lots of artists would have just figured out a way to reproduce the paintings as prints, but I want people to own originals. Besides, I don’t want the unsold inventory hanging around.

    As my dad used to say, “You pays your money and you takes your choice”. I have no idea where he got that saying. His main piece of business advice was, “You kiss their fanny and you take their money.” He had a lot of sayings, most kind of funny, and all full of wisdom.