On Friday’s post I said that the only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King, by Jane Coughran and me, published by Cabinart Books in 1998, is to get lucky on eBay or on Amazon. Then I decided to look for myself. Nothing on eBay, and this is what was on Amazon. […]
Finishing a Drawing 20 Years Later
In 1998, Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King*. Some of the drawings crossed over the center seam of the book to cover 2 pages. Some of the drawings were an odd shape to accommodate words. This is one of those drawings (only photographed, not scanned and touched up for the web, so the […]
A Sore Subject
A drawing student of mine recounted a conversation she had with an elderly artist from here in Tulare County. She told him she was taking oil painting lessons from someone in the area, and the old artist said, “That’s not creative – that’s just copying”. Ow. That struck a nerve with me. What is or […]
Squishing a Meadow
How does one “squish a meadow”? One layer at a time, with oil paint on canvas, a 6×18″ canvas to be specific. Canvases this size and shape have become popular; they seem to fit well into odd spaces for people. I can accommodate this. This is how Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park looked about […]
What is an Art Administrator?
I’m not sure what an art administrator is, but that is what I seem to be about once a week, or sometimes once every two weeks. Look at this list of tasks: Package up a painting to send, find the receipt book, see if a deposit was made, update the receipt, make a self-addressed stamped […]
Painting Chickens
I’m never quite sure what to do with these 2×2″ canvases. I thought I was ordering 6 but ordered 60 by accident. (This was quite a few years ago.) They are difficult to paint, and it doesn’t seem right to ask more than $20 apiece. Each canvas with an easel cost me about $3, and […]
Almost Mineral King
One day last week, Trail Guy and I drove up to the Conifer Gate (the upper gate) on the Mineral King Road so he could replace the combination lock that allows cabin folks to access their cabins in the winter. That is the elevation where the black oaks are, and they can be so glowingly […]
Chasing the Big Trees and Dogwoods
We (Trail Guy, Hiking Buddy, and Mr. Hiking Buddy) joined in with the madding crowd (I don’t know what “madding” actually means, but I liked the book and the movies “Far From the Madding Crowd”) and visited the main part of Sequoia National Park. I wanted to see the dogwoods in their autumn colors and […]
Grapes, Again
Is watching grapes get painted about the same as watching paint dry on a fence? Don’t answer that! When this is dryer, I will add brighter sunshine on the edges of some of the grapes. That contrast is what made me go for my camera when I saw these grapes. And now it is dryer, […]
Growing Some Grapes
A dear friend bought some little fruit paintings for her dining room a couple of years ago. She decided that another painting would look good on the other side of the window. I agreed. We discussed the options, and she thought grapes would be good there. I told her that grapes are crazy hard, so […]