Oil Paintings on the Move

Sales were slow this December. Actually, sales of oil paintings were slow all fall, beginning with the show in Tulare called “Around Here”, where no paintings and six pencil drawings sold.

However, during the fall season, a few paintings did move. These first two sold through Kaweah Arts, located in The Dome in Three Rivers.

The other two were commissioned paintings, neither one on a fast track, and both recently delivered into the hands of happy customers.

Look at this painting, drying in the house, and drying outside by the wood stack.

Now look at how much better it photographed in the sunshine than when it was overcast.

I drove this next painting to the customers rather than shipping it. It was a rare and wonderful chance to visit with them. They ordered it while living out of the country, and I delivered it when they were prepping their old house to sell so they can move to another state.

The painting caused a few tears, since I apparently (by the grace of God) did manage to paint the right person.

These customers requested another painting to take as they move to a home with many walls, in a place that has no Mineral King and no sequoia trees. I brought two more paintings to show them, and they chose this one.

I was pleased to put this in their hands, and happy that I had it long enough to make some improvements. If a painting doesn’t sell, I evaluate it carefully to find ways to make it better. This one, Sunny Sequoias, provided me with several opportunities for improvement.

And although it seemed like a slow season for sales, it wasn’t really. Just different. Not complaining, just explaining. All Most of my needs are met (but I need to find a different host company for my website), and most of my wants (does anyone know if it is possible to convert an automatic transmission to a standard?? OF COURSE IT ISN’T! I still miss Fernando, but recognize and appreciate the superiority of Momscar.)

Beginning drawing workshop at a “new” place

Stem & Stone, a neat little shop in Three Rivers, sponsored a beginning drawing workshop. Their store is too small to accommodate a big table with people around it, so we used the Bequette House at the Three Rivers Historical Museum.

I love old buildings, with all sorts of architectural details lacking in modern structures. Although I’ve seen it for many years, Sunday afternoon was my first peek into this quaint little house.

The large table easily sat the six participants and could have handled two more.
The rocker in the far left corner is calling my name.

Out of respect to the attendees, and because I was too busy teaching to don a photographer’s hat, I only took photos of the building.

A good time was had by all. Now I’m wondering if I can just go into the Bequette House and sit in that old rocker by windows with excellent light and just read or knit and enjoy the atmosphere, away from the annoying intermittent tech troubles.

Library Mural, Day Nine

You last saw the mural looking like this:

On the way to Ivanhoe on Friday morning, a clear, sunny, and cold morning, I pulled over for a few photos of oranges.

Is that center orange rotting on the tree??

The mountains were very visible from the library’s address. (Just keep your eyes above the waste.)

Intern and I had a brief discussion about what needed to be done next, I let him choose the task he preferred, and we dove right in. I took no photos until I had worked on the lettering and begun the auditorium.

The oranges still weren’t bright enough on the right side. Intern worked on those.

I began with the auditorium inset and then moved to the label. What a thrill to use all those bright colors! Of course, sunshine made a huge difference.

This is the first time I’ve seen sunshine on the wall. I kept taking photos because it was so interesting and fun (easily amused here.)

It felt as if I was treading water, and the more I did, the more I saw that needed to be done. After standing back and running through a mental list, I sorted the tasks into ones that Intern can do and ones that I need to do. He had left for the day, so I had to decide what I might be able to finish in the remaining hours. If sections are left partially finished, I have less of a sense of forward motion.

I chose to work on the mountains, finally deciding that Sawtooth needed to move south (to the right, both in real life and on the wall) and needed to be smaller.

too round-topped
better
smaller Sawtooth
Hard to tell with the spotty sun
Castle Rocks
Kaweah drainage more realistic

See? Castle Rocks!

See? The Kaweah drainage and repaired Alta Peak!

The daylight is lasting incrementally longer each week, and I was able to work until 4:30. The setting sun made for a different kind of lighting on the final photo. Check out the shadow cast by the fruitless mulberry, that is STILL holding onto some leaves.

What Happened, Part Two

Today I will be painting on the Ivanhoe library mural, Lord willing, the Creek, etc. The past two days have been seriously disrupted by many hours on the phone trying to solve the website problem, which also took down my email.

If I was a smoker, it would have been a couple of 2-pack days.

Contemplation

I really contemplated whether or not it is possible to run an art business without a website. Many artists only use Facebook and/or Instagram. Having dabbled in those several years ago, my gut instinct is NO NO NO NO. And NO!

There are no Yellow Pages, direct mail is cost prohibitive and cannot be easily updated, and I’m not inclined to wear an A-frame sign or a weird chicken costume and stand on a street corner. I don’t want to rent public space when I have my most excellent studio and painting workshop here at home, an easy 35-second commute by foot from the house.

So, my inclination is to just relax and recover, and then look into another hosting company. BlueHost used to be based in Arizona, and humans were accessible here in the United States without a robot on the phone to direct you to another country where some poor (but very smart) person with an accent (occasionally accompanied by background children or roosters) would keep reassuring you that they really were sorry for your problem and would do their best to help. It wasn’t until after a series of phone calls that added up to 5 hours (yes, I counted) when I insisted that the case needed to be escalated and stated that I will look for another server/host company that I got an email saying the problem was resolved.

Maybe it is resolved; however, my confidence in BlueHost has taken a hard battering, and there may be a separation in our future.

Techie Details

They upgraded me to an expensive plan, which I declined. They moved me to a more reasonable plan, which included a $199 “migration fee”. Then they neglected to “migrate” my site to the reasonable plan; on one call I was reassured that it had been done, and it worked briefly. Next, the email that is attached to the website ceased functioning, and I was told that it had not been migrated. WELL, MIGRATE ALREADY!

Ugh. Can we talk about something more pleasant? Let’s lift our eyes until the hills. . . from whence does our help come? Not from tech, that’s for sure and for certain!

Library Mural, Day Eight

In case you are wondering, all the previous days’ blog posts croaked with my website. So, here is the best I can do to recreate the most current day for you.

These orange trees have been “skirted”, which means pruned so nothing touches the ground.

I tried to fix the trees on the mural to appear this way. Tricky business. . .

Intern and I mixed a paint color for the inset of the Ivanhoe Elementary Auditorium.

My mom and her brother helped a little bit.

To work on the auditorium, I would have had to sit in the mud. Instead, I sat on the slimy log to work on the inset of Twin Buttes.

The mural looked like this at the end of day #8.

And thus we end the abbreviated version of Day Eight on the Ivanhoe Library Mural.

Now I’m going to either bang my head on the wall or try to learn to back up all my posts so this doesn’t continue to happen OR I’m going to look for an alternative to BlueHost.

What Happened??

My website croaked. I called the server? host? platform? something to ask for help on Tuesday morning, January 6. The man on the phone said he could see what happened, fixed it, and it would be fine in about 10 minutes.

It wasn’t.

Twelve hours later, it was back, but nothing after December 30, 2025, appeared on the blog, and the 1/2 price calendar sale also didn’t show.

I found the draft of the Learned List from December, but it only showed nine things instead of the twelve I eventually came up with. I published it immediately as it was.

Now I have to figure out how to get my email working again.

Maybe I’ll rewrite some of the posts from earlier this week, if I can remember what I said.

Maybe I’ll just take up smoking.

Prolly not. Fret not. I’d rather eat dark chocolate. Or complain about tech. (“If sin enticeth thee, consent thou not.” Proverbs 1:10)

Wouldn’t you just know that it croaked the day after I mailed out a newsletter that announced there are a few slots left in the beginning drawing workshop and that the calendars are half-price now? Prolly missed a bunch of sales and signups. Or not, but I won’t know. Now the calendar won’t even appear in my online store.

Oh well. Here’s the flyer about the beginning drawing workshop.

P.S. If you want a calendar, email me at cabinart [zero] [six} at sbcglobal dot net because that email works (trusting that you will be able to decipher it correctly).

P.P.S. A broken website is a nothing-burger in light of what several dear friends are going through: one recently lost her son to suicide; another has cancer in his bones (Dudes, get your PSA checked even if your doctor says it isn’t needed after 70—it’s only a blood test, not a nasty procedure); yesterday I learned that yet another has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. That’s all Very Very Difficult stuff; a website can be repaired, lost posts can be written, workshops can be given with empty seats, and unsold calendars can be tossed if too much time passes.

P.P.P.S. It was a beautiful day.

Nine New* Things Learned in December

This is a reposting of the December Learned List, one that was still in draft form; the final version disappeared in The Great Website Splat.

Photos accompanying our monthly Learned List are very random this month, sprinkled in to prevent this from looking daunting and TLDR.

  1. Cursive writing is good for your brain, according to The Case for Cursive. (Thank you for the link, Reader Sharon!)
Jackson doesn’t write either cursive or printing.

2. COL might actually stand for “chuckle out loud”, although my friend wrote it as “chuckle out load”, which made me COL. (Thank you, Reader JC!)

3. “Cuco” is the common nickname for “Refugio”. Go figure. (How does “Billy” emerge from “William”, or even weirder, “Jack” from “John”, or perhaps weirdest of all, “Chewy” from “Jesus”?)

4. Dr. Victor Davis Hanson, a professor, historian, and farmer, is the most brilliant person I have ever encountered. I cannot keep up with his podcasts, articles, or books, and much is way over my head. Here is a recent article he wrote on the decline of Western civilization (and for the sake of honesty here, I don’t even know exactly what “Western civilization” means). Can the Dark Ages Return? is a sobering look at what is taking place in our time, and well worth laboring through. (He makes it a little easier by using far more paragraphs than were deemed necessary when we were all learning to write, because he understands that his material is a bit difficult for us lesser minds to digest with our current squirrely attention spans.)

5. I subscribed to something called Tangle, a daily email that breaks down the facts of one major news topic per day. This is what caught my attention from their website: “Most news outlets have biases that are obvious to every American, we are all living in self-curated “news bubbles” where we are spoon-fed beliefs we already have, and if we log onto social media the people we disagree with are caricatured into the worst people possible.” So far, I haven’t made it through a single article, but my intentions remain good. I think I am getting exhausted by current events.

6. After 2 weeks of inconvenience, I found the inner fortitude to stand my ground: when a customer wants a mural but will not provide access to the building, hold to common sense, which is that humans need facilities where they work. (Thus, I will only be painting in Ivanhoe on Fridays when the library is open.)

7. Eighty-Four is the actual name of an actual town in Pennsylvania. Something (a labor union? a lumberyard?) called “84 Lumber” originated there.

8. This large-ish wooden panel of a redwood tree was displayed at Stem & Stone. I stopped by to deliver more notecards and saw that it had developed a problem. Turns out that knotholes in wood contain substance that soaks through paint.

9. Have you ever heard of a Tule elk? I hadn’t, but there is one wandering around Three Rivers. They used to be plentiful in the Central Valley but were a nuisance to cattle ranchers, and the largest ranch in the valley, Miller Lux, may have had a role in mostly eradicating them. (Who knows for sure? I read it on the interwebs. . .)

This photo is an enlargement from my friend’s early morning phone photo.

*Of course they are “new” —otherwise would they be on a list of things learned? Supposedly the Search Engines bring more readers when one includes “new” in a post title. Why do I care? I know my readers, write for them (YOU!) and don’t need a pile of strangers “liking” me in order to feel validated.

More About Drawing Lessons

It is said that the best way to learn something is by teaching it to someone else. Hard to do that if you don’t understand the process yourself.

Because my students get to know one another in group lessons, they often help each other. This thrills me, because I eavesdrop and get to witness that they are really and truly learning.

Finished! This was an ENORMOUSLY challenging drawing.

Next, it goes home with me to be scanned and Photoshopped for possible reproductions, either as prints or cards. All the color has to be removed before the printing will look right.

Speaking of ENORMOUSLY CHALLENGING, look at this little guy (also photoshopped for the purpose of good quality reproduction )

There is a one-day beginning drawing workshop planned for January 11, in Three Rivers. You can register at Stem & Stone. (Stemandstone.3r@gmail.com or 559-731-4881.) Class size is limited to ten people.

Calendars available here, $25, includes shipping.

A Peek into Drawing Lessons

Since 1994, I’ve been teaching people how to draw. Private lessons, group lessons with individualized help, and workshops. My drawing students are wonderful people, and I am so proud of them!

We don’t meet in December, so students try to get their work finished by the end of November. Some do, some don’t. Some need to finish by Christmas, so I’ve had them come to my studio for help. I’ve gone to their homes to help when we are off during summer, and I’ve had students scan or photograph their work and send it to me for help. They are wonderful people and I love helping them.

Obviously, this is a very experienced student. She came to me initially because she was a watercolorist who wanted more realism in her paintings. After a few graphite drawings, she moved into colored pencil. That was about 20 years ago!

This student picks Very Hard Very Detailed photos to work with, and she NEVER gives up! If we weren’t lifetime friends, I’d be sure that she just chooses these subjects to test my ability!

This student fights with perfectionism. Perfectionism is winning, for sure! She is never in a hurry and thoroughly enjoys the process. Every so often she will announce that she isn’t going to take quite so long or strive quite so hard for perfection. It makes us laugh.

This is work by my newest student. She joined lessons to learn how to paint better. Drawing is the basis for all art, and if you learn to see things realistically and learn the “tricks” of drawing, your other art will improve. This is her second or maybe 3rd drawing with me; I think she is close to finished with this perfect little face (yes, she has captured a likeness!)

I have room in a couple of classes, and if enough people (four) want lessons and can come from 1-2 p.m. on Tuesday afternoons, I will add another class.

Did I mention that my students are wonderful people?

You can see the work of two other students on this post from early November.

Calendars available here, $25, includes shipping.

Four Assorted Boxing Day Thoughts

  1. You prolly know that Boxing Day is a British tradition. In the olden days, the rich people boxed up their excesses the day after Christmas to give to the po’ folk. I don’t know what they do now, except I do know that one friend in Nova Scotia chooses to make a really nice dinner on Boxing Day rather than on overloaded Christmas.

2. After the Yellow Tunnel oil painting dries again, I will put the finishing touches on it. I can print and write more neatly, sometimes it is just unimportant, such as when I am slamming out the notes as fast as they pop into my mind.

3. This is the best article and idea I have ever read about Christmas. It was in the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and my Dad cut it out to give to me. I never forgot its wisdom, and it was very good to find it on the internet a few years ago.Iin case it gets deleted, I printed a copy.

Here is the article for you: Merry Excessmas!

4. Sometimes I draw in church. It helps me listen, because keeping my hands busy occupies the right side of my brain so it doesn’t hijack the other side. If I am drawing and listening, I’m not making a list of things to do in the coming week, writing reminder notes to myself, or other things that actually prevent listening.

P.S. Calendars are still available because IT ISN’T 2026 YET! Look here for the info. Or email me here: cabinart [at] cabinart [dot] net. (Written that way because of internet gremlins.) Or call me if you have my number (oh nonono, not putting it here for those gremlins to find!)

P.P.S. The Beginning Drawing Workshop is still open for registration. Look at this blog post from Monday for the details.