Saw/Saw 2

Welcome back! I knew you would be interested to know how Saw/Saw turned out. Not sure if this qualifies as a real mural or not; I think it might just be an Odd Job.

Time to start on the ridges in front of Sawtooth, and meanwhile I am still wondering why things look darker on the camera screen. I also realized that if I would put a circular mask over the rectangular photo that I’d get things more proportionally correct.
Sawtooth didn’t have quite the right angle, so here I corrected my shapes.
Better, as each step and layer ought to be.
First coating on the rest of the blade.
Correcting the colors and shapes on the lower parts.

Finally, I figured out what was wonky with my camera. I had been experimenting with the settings, still not quite understanding what they all meant. When I changed “Poster Effect” to “Program” (who chooses these words??), It photographed more accurately.

But now the computer is not behaving properly, and when I export the photo of the finished Saw/Saw, it says it goes somewhere, and then it isn’t there.

My Mac is lying to me and cheating you out of seeing the finished saw blade!

Boy am I mad.

Maybe it will fix itself and work tomorrow. Besides, a job is never finished until these 2 things happen: A. The customer is happy and B. I have signed it.

Another Post About Mineral King

Perhaps I should only write about Mineral King because it is the most popular topic.

Nah. . . this website is expensive, so it needs to contain things about my business. But today is Friday, and Fridays are for Mineral King posts (when I have something to show and tell).

The reddish areas are not burned trees; it is borate, a fire retardant.

When I drove up the hill on Tuesday, July 24, there was a huge lit sign at the bottom of the road saying that there was a fire 15 miles up the road and that no backpacking permits would be issued. It looked like a nothing-burger, but I am very very glad that the Park was suppressing it with all their available resources, because who knows what those bad boy fires do when crawling along the ground, or smoldering in roots?

That evening, we strolled over the bridge and admired the evening light. 

The plan was to visit some neighbor-friends, and if we were lucky, maybe we’d get to hear them play some music. Jazz isn’t normally my musical choice, but these guys were magical together. This is a father with his 2 sons, and I was sure they were reading one another’s minds! 

This is how things looked on the stroll back home. 

A day or so later, we spotted this Model A in the parking lot, and turned out it was someone’s that we know. I took a few photos for him on the bridge, a tricky business with a little bit of traffic, plus the dark shadows and bright light in the background. This was the best of the bunch. 

Then, while visiting some other neighbor-friends, one of them pointed out that “Bearskin”, the patch of snow on the side of Vandever, is looking less like the skin of a bear and more like a rooster this summer. 

We hiked to the lower part of White Chief with some friends. One of them is an entomologist and pointed out this beautiful bug. I said that a pair would make nice earrings, and she said that some company actually does make earrings out of their wings! 

White Chief canyon, after the super steep climbing is over.
Swamp onion near the little pond, its glory fading. . .
Three hiking buddies, a privilege to share the trail with.
I don’t know why Trail Guy is sticking his hands in the water that is flowing toward the little pond.
Oh no! Another unknown yellow flower!
The tail end of the summer’s peak. There is plenty of summer left, but the flowers are over their stunning best.

Saw/Saw

What is “Saw/Saw”?

Glad you asked!

I have been commissioned to paint Sawtooth on a saw blade. Hence, saw/saw.

The blade is about 4′ in diameter and is heavy metal. I lifted it onto my round table and then couldn’t figure out whether or not I should lean on the teeth to get the balance off myself and onto the table. The weight made the decision for me – it was too heavy to hold while I decided whether or not the teeth would hurt me.

Round blade on a round table.
This photo was the customer’s preferred view and seems to be the most popular version of Sawtooth I’ve ever painted. I got lucky with my timing on that photo, which is how most of my good reference photos happen. Wait. It isn’t luck; it is Divine Intervention.
Most of the colors were already mixed in my mural paints.
Starting from back to front means sky first, clouds next.
That went fast. Here are the colors I might need for Sawtooth.
Sawtooth’s colors look different all the time, so I don’t have to match the photo, just make it look good.
Oops. The camera was on a weird setting (Poster effect? What means that??) I wondered why things were looking darker on my camera than in real life!

And that’s all you get to see today. Tomorrow is Friday, and Fridays are for Mineral King.

See you on Monday? I’ll show you . . . the rest of the story! (Anyone else around here grow up listening to Paul Harvey?)

Seven Things I Learned In July

Giant Blazing Star
  1. If I don’t keep track of learning new things during the month, I’m hard pressed to think of them at the end of the month.
  2. There is a wildflower called “Giant Blazing Star”; it looks like its smaller cousin, “Blazing Star”. Wildflower naming is just confusing and weird to learn, but I persist in my quest, and one day there will be a book called Wildflowers of Mineral King: Common Names.
  3. Do great books count? I read an unusual number of books that I rated with 5 stars on Goodreads. We Took To the Woods, Blackbird (and the three other books by Jennifer Lauck), Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.
  4. I didn’t learn an answer to this question but here it is for you:WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY WILDFIRES IN CALIFORNIA??? It wasn’t this way until about 10 years ago, at least in my memory. WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?? A friend has the theory that it has to do with a change in Park policy about suppression. Many wildfires are not in the national parks, so that doesn’t really cover it. I think the tremendous media attention causes arsonists to crawl out of the woodwork, but that is just a hairbrained theory of my own warped thinking.

    The Horse Creek Fire from the Mineral King Road at night on July 21, 2018.
  5. A cat will do what a cat will do. After 2.5 months of trying to befriend Heidi, she ran away. No amount of mentoring by Piper or acceptance by Tucker and Scout could fix whatever was broken inside her little head.
  6. I’ve had an ongoing discussion with a friend who calls lodgepole trees “tamaracks”. Turns out that there is a tamarack tree that is not a lodgepole, but a deciduous conifer. Who knew?? I learned of this in a book called “Devotions From the Mountains” by Lisa Ham (published by Thomas Nelson). I’m not sure that was the intended lesson from that day, but it sure was interesting to me.
  7. We heard a guy interviewed on the radio who runs an organization in Montana called Provision International. They collect excess food and things, then ship them to needy people in poor countries. Among the things that they provide are used shoes, called “Share A Pair“. Trail Guy and I went through our closets and we filled a large carton with shoes to send to Billings. If you like their philosophy and mission, you might do the same. It seems more helpful than loading up a local thrift shop or just hanging on in case you might wear them again.

Not Enough Paintings??

Each year, summer comes and Mineral King opens at the same time. This year I felt very prepared, having completed 30-40 paintings of Mineral King, many of which sold as I was working on them. Small paintings sell at the Silver City Store Resort, and that is my main place to sell during the summer.

In July, I decided that I still didn’t have enough. There were too many Sawtooths, not enough general subjects, and definitely not enough bears. Because of the difficulty of getting photos of bears, I don’t have much reference material. However, the one bear painting I did sold immediately, so I decided to paint from some of my other bear photos, even though they aren’t that good. After all, if I can draw horses that I can’t see, certainly I can paint bears that I can’t see.

All that was hanging in the painting workshop was the 10×10″ sold bridge and a retouched “Leaving Monarch”.

After a little self talk (Who cares if you don’t want to paint bears from photos that don’t offer enough detail? Would you rather wait tables somewhere? Be a nanny? Pack fruit? Come on, let’s move it, hubba hubba hubba!!), I began two 6×6″ bears, and prepared to do another painting of the famous view from the bridge of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Cabin.

Turning things sideways helps me see the shapes more accurately.

Then I slapped out the 6×6″ painting of the most photographed, painted, drawn and recognizable scene in Mineral King. Very few people notice that the tallest tree, the red fir on the left is no longer there. A shorter red fir is now in that position, but I have a collection of “old” photos that I don’t want to waste. So I paint it and people buy it. (Thank you, Buying People!)

Top to bottom, left to right: Bear IV, Mineral King XI, Leaving Monarch, Oak Grove Bridge XXIV, Bear III

(Lest you worry about my attitude, I actually enjoyed the painting session in spite of the rattling swamp cooler and excessive heat. It helped to listen to The Recappery, where the History Chicks gave a thorough account of an episode of “Anne With An E”. They are so much fun, and they bleep their cuss words.)

Pushing Through For Good Customers

Recently, I’ve focused on my weaknesses in drawing and painting. If I can’t see it, it might not be possible for me to draw or paint the thing. But, if I push through and have help and take lots of time, sometimes I can succeed.

If these weren’t commissioned pieces with a paycheck at the end, I would have given up. Much of what I choose to do is speculative work – will it sell? Will anyone care?

But, both of the recent ultra difficult pieces are not speculation art. There were real customers with an idea of what they wanted, and they counted on me to figure out how to do the job. They each gave me as much time as I required, trusting my ideas and judgement.

These are good friends and good customers; knowing my limitations, I wanted to please them in spite of the difficulties.

If I was more business oriented, there would probably be a contract, a down payment, and the contract would talk about things like “Change Orders” and “Photo Availability”.

I showed you the completed Mineral King Pack Station last week (and since learned that the white horse’s eye is too high, but too late, it is at the framer now).

Today, have a look at the completed Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge.

The customer is very happy and so am I!

About the truck on the bridge: the customer’s husband was heading down the hill, while a friend was coming up the hill. When the friend arrived, Mrs. Customer asked the friend if she had seen her husband on the road. The friend said she hadn’t. Later, the friend shared the photo she had taken of the bridge on the way up, and Lo-And-Behold, she had photographed Mrs. Customer’s husband’s pickup-truck on the bridge without knowing it!!

P.S. What is “lo and behold”? I think it means “oh my stars!”. . . My neighbor, who died at age 94, was very fond of that expression, and I think of him every time I hear it.

More Action-Packed Mineral King Days

Last week in Mineral King, Trail Guy, 2 friends and I took a hike to a special place that I am choosing to keep secret. (You can ask me in private, but I’m not posting any details on the World Wide Web.) On our hiking day, we experienced fabulous wildflowers, tremendous views, hail, thunder, lightning and rain.

This will be a long post – might want to refill your coffee cup.

View back down toward Mineral King about 2.5 miles up the Franklin Lakes/Farewell Gap trail.

My favorite flower was out in abundance.

Explorer’s Gentian

It was a bit of a challenge to keep marching forward while surrounded by this.

Franklin Lakes – You can see one of them here, and sort of see the shelf where the upper smaller lake is above (if you know what to look for).

We got back home to great light, rain, and news that lightning had sparked a wildfire about 14 miles down the road (but on the other side of the canyon), called the Horse Creek Fire.

Big puffy clouds made for good photos at the end of the day.

The next day we only managed an easy sort of walk. Limp. Shuffle. (Me, not Trail Guy, so that would be the “royal we”.)

The East Fork of the Kaweah, near Cold Springs Campground.
Penstemon, possibly “showy penstemon”, but I haven’t learned the varieties yet. This is a close second to Explorer’s Gentian in my hierarchy of favorite wildflowers.

The annual Mineral King Preservation Society (MKPS) “Picnic in the Park” happened for the 33rd time. Our speaker was the wife of a former packer who worked for a private pack station, as a contractor, and later for Sequoia. She was outstanding!

The picnic was held by the Honeymoon Cabin, a little museum put together by the MKPS, and painted and drawn by me more times than I can remember.

The door is almost always open on the Honeymoon Cabin, AKA the “Point Cabin”, although I’ve never noticed any point, other than a museum is a nice thing.
‘Splaining things to the folks.
‘Splaining things to the ranger.
Listening, ‘splaining, knitting, chest beating? and watching the knitter

It was a day of much weather variety, sometimes in pounding sun, ending in large raindrops.

I drove down after dark that night, a different way to experience the road.

The Horse Creek fire as seen on Saturday, July 21, around 9:30 p.m. Doesn’t look very threatening, but one never knows. The Park has chosen suppression as the best method for this fire, and I am very glad they have.

No Head Banging Necessary

My horsey friend didn’t respond to my request for help on the drawing that is too hard; my horsey drawing student did, and we experienced a serious role reversal!

She offered detailed advice and supplied photos to help me understand the things that weren’t visible in my photo.

I followed her instructions as best as I could, and then decided I didn’t care if the horses were rideable or not, had 3 or 6 legs, or if they needed a veterinarian (or an eraser). When I couldn’t think of anything else to fix or change, I scanned it and sent it to her, saying that I’d listen if she had more suggestions that I’d listen but it would be after banging my head on the wall.

Here is what my horsey helpful drawing student/commission coach said:

“Instead of banging your head I think you should sit back with a cold drink and celebrate…this looks REALLY good. I think the recipient will be thrilled. 

While I might have been able to offer suggestions, I definitely could not have drawn this, so my hat is off to you. Well done.”

Lessons are free for her in September when we resume classes.

Phew!!

P.S. Someone else saw the completed drawing and thought the mule’s ears were still too small. Bummer. The drawing is now at the framer, and I am DONE with it.