Painting in the relative darkness of an overcast and rainy day limits my ability to mix colors well or see detail. This is fine when I am a cog in the gears of my painting factory. Figuratively speaking, not literally speaking, and not speaking, but writing.
Never mind.
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Oops. I wasn’t paying attention to where the hanging hardware was on that one canvas. The redwood paintings are in the painting workshop because I keep thinking there must be a way to make them better. I haven’t figured out that way yet, and don’t want to mess them up while painting in relative darkness.
Two palettes at once, but primarily mixing and painting skies on canvases, and then laying them back on the table to dry because the peg board was full.
Shove over, redwoods, because the skies need your places.
I wonder what these will look like when the sun comes out. Probably will have poor coverage and need recoating.
Time to move on. All the skies I can cover for the day are covered. This citrus painting has been collecting dust and nagging me for 2 months, and it is time to address it.
Hello, Mr. Incomplete Citrus Painting (How is that for addressing a painting?)
The sizes and placements weren’t right. They still might not be the best. The detail will have to wait until I have this settled. That will require a sunlit day.
This might be a boring subject. Please forgive me, and come back on Monday when I might have something more interesting to share.
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Thank you for hanging in. Here is another smile for you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. . .
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The beginning of painting a new series is a very boring factory-type assembly line of assigning inventory numbers, choosing titles, and attaching hanging hardware. Then all the canvases have to be primed, or “toned” in Art Speak. I just use whatever blend of colors I find in the bottom of my turpentine jar for this task.
Actually, before I begin the boring part, there is a brain-stretching exercise. It involves looking through previous years’ sales, seeing which subjects and sizes have been the most popular, looking through my existing inventory, and then making educated guesses about subjects, sizes, and quantities of each. Then I review my extensive photo files and make more guesses about what to paint.
These on the floor have already been primed from a previous ambitious painting session.
It was too loud in the workshop for Tucker. He’s kind of sensitive.
At least Scout and Trail Guy were in the workshop with me. Trail Guy was working on a project, talking to himself and to the radio and sometimes to me. Scout was napping in the sunshine in the window.
I ran out of hardware and out of room, so I walked home.
I actually made progress on the tree pencil drawing, in spite of the spontaneous field trip to Kaweah Lake.
But first, look at the season’s first iris, blooming in a pot outside my studio. (I seem to be suffering from Shiny Object Syndrome these days.)
Now, to the drawing table.
The tree up close on the laptop screen, in 3 different printed photos and a sketch done on site – maybe these are enough to get my pencils moving again.
I am liking this picture. It is okay to like one’s own work, really.
Trail Guy and I took another field trip. If I call it that, then it sounds as if I am working. I am always working if I hand out a business card or take a photo that might be worth painting.
View upcanyon from Slick Rock area at Kaweah Lake.
Alta Peak is the highest one; Moro Rock is the granite monolith just above the green hills on the left; the spots in the sky are my signature photo look.
Mustard is usually the first wildflower in the foothills, blooming in early February like clockwork (if we’ve had rain).
Walking in the lake bottom means getting cockleburrs in ones shoelaces.
With the recent rains, the lake is filling up, so we walked up to the Horse Creek Bridge, since our normal route is underwater now.
The pillars are huge up close and would be fun to paint, maybe like the trunks of redwood trees. I wonder how mural paint holds up underwater. . .
On the other side of the bridge is the abutment of a small old bridge. No dates visible, and only a vague idea of its purpose (besides the obvious one of crossing Horse Creek).
Looking back at the bridge. I’ve never seen it from this side before.
What a peculiar sight and strange find –an oyster shell! Were the squirrels planning on using it as a trap door? Did if fall from someone’s boat?
We had some sort of snowy-like hail stuff. In case you are interested, the fence on the right was built by Trail Guy and The Cowboy, using salvaged boards from a defunct water treatment plant.
You can see the sort of “fence” I build. . . salvaged this and that. And you can see the sort of snowy hail type of stuff.
Scout is happy to have me back in the studio.
She stays pretty busy.
See why she is named Scout?
HEY! CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ARTIST! AREN’T YOU GOING TO DO SOME WORK?
WHAT’S THIS?? So glad you asked. . . it is the ARC of Mineral King Wildflowers. (ARC means Advanced Reader Copy.) See all the post-it notes? Those mark all the changes needed. I only found a few typos; the rest were adjusting things visually and polishing some wording.
The goal is for this book, Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names, to be ready at the end of April for a book signing at the Three Rivers Historical Museum. I’ll keep you posted.
I’ve spent many nights away from home in the past month. The drive between home and away is so beautiful this time of year that I want to show you a few photos. I hold the camera up to the window while driving and not looking at the camera screen, so any photo that is sort of okay is lucky. Then I edit the lucky shots.
Someone has graffitied my initials in my favorite color on this road sign.
Would any of these photos make good paintings? Or am I just blinded by green love? If I paint these, can I write off my mileage? Or can I write off my mileage because I am considering these to be paintable?
I can’t stand tax season. But I love this time of year. Life is full of contradictions, dilemmas, incongruities, paradoxes, always at the same time. Thank goodness there are goods happening at the same time as bads.
For the first time in my life, I have purposely not gotten a cat “fixed”. We have so much trouble keeping cats that I want to generate a few back-up kitties. Besides, it costs so much and then some coyote just comes along, and poof, gone, bye-bye cat and bye-bye dollars.
So, our little Scout has become a boy-scoutin’ kitty. She has a couple of boyfriends who are yowling at one another down by the road. We are a little worried that Scout will go scouting too far away, but even if she was “fixed” there would be no guarantee of safety.
Meanwhile, I haven’t been working much and went scouting around (for scenery and exercise, not like Scout!!) with a couple of friends. It is early spring in Three Rivers, up on the BLM land along Salt Creek.
We saw a total of 4 young ‘uns! I told you it is spring around here.
First bush lupine of the year in bloom – more evidence of spring.
This waterfall along Salt Creek doesn’t photograph well for me, but I always try.
Whoa. This is so beautiful. Sometimes I can’t believe I get to live here.
Does this look like January to you? It was January 30 when I was here, honest! See? Tulare County isn’t all about unemployment, obesity and smog. (But don’t tell anyone else, okay?)
This map is where we were. Salt Creek BLM land. Some people call it Case Mountain, but it is one very long walk to Case Mountain, involving a tremendous amount of trespassing. Since it follows the Salt Creek drainage, that is the name I prefer.
It took me just as long to do the house itself as the entire background. Maybe longer. The drawing is 11×14″, which means the porch details are miniscule.
Original photo, messy sketch (the book got bent a little when I slipped on the cow poo), beginning of drawing.
Here’s what I had to work with, once back in the studio.
I put on a podcast, an interview with James Clear about his new book called Atomic Habits. (Wow, what a practical guy. I might buy the book, but probably will wait a few years until I find it in the local library system.)
Using the enlarged version of the original photo on my laptop, the original paper photo, and a couple of new ones printed on paper, I drew for awhile. I broke my rules about drawing from left to right and top to bottom.
When the podcast ended, I listened to another one, and almost fell asleep at the table. Guess it was time to call it quits.
