Paintbrush Gardening

Is it gardening when I am planting flowers with my paintbrush? Is it gardening when I am painting wildflowers?

It doesn’t matter – sounds good in a blog post title and sort of works.

This is one of the popular 6×18″ sized canvases, begun with a few spots and slashes of color. I showed you these first 3 pictures in a post earlier this week.

Now for the more recent progress of this oil painting of poppies and lupine:

There needs to be grasses across some of the flowers for it to look real, but I can’t do that while the paint is wet or the grasses will be orange and purple. There is a messy poppy in the center (from left to right but sort of higher than center from top to bottom) that demonstrates the folly of this maneuver.

Now it is finished.

Foothill Wildflowers, 6×18″, $150 plus 8% sales tax in California

And, I know you are dying to know the state of our cat situation.

Piper is happy and oblivious to the fact that we have just completely altered his life.

How have we altered Piper’s life? Look what we did yesterday:

We went to the ranch expecting to choose two kittens and brought home FOUR.

Three tortoiseshell females and one solid black male. OH NO! HOW WILL WE TELL WHICH ONE IS PIPER WHEN THE NEW ONE GROWS UP??

Name That Drawing

Want to help me name a drawing? First you get to read how the drawing came about.

Chickens are a popular subject in life and in art. They will make an appearance in my 2019 calendar, and I chose these 2 photos to work from.

The black dude on the lower left has too little detail, so I substituted this one. It is called a “Barred Rock”, as opposed to a “Plymouth Rock”, because it has “bars” on it. (Does a Plymouth Rock have plymouths on it? What is a plymouth?)

The drawing was a challenge; my students have heard over and over from me, “Pick something you love because you will be staring at it for a long time”. Can’t say I love chickens, but I do love a good pencil challenge.

Slow start
Closing in on it. That guinea hen was a huge challenge with all her tiny spots.

YEA! Finished! But what shall I call it?? “Hectic Hens”, “Large And In Charge”, “Do You Know Who I Am?” or something else entirely? (I already used “Busy Flock” on a oil painting.) 

What do you think? You may tell me in the comments, or email me at cabinart@cabinart.net. I’ll wait a week or so, and then pick a winner. There will be a prize. Might be an egg or something. . . 

May Flowers

April showers bring May flowers in some parts of the world; in Three Rivers, it is more this way: With April heat, May flowers are beat.

That’s okay. I can paint my own flowers.

This is going to take longer than expected. Most paintings do.
I build the background around the flowers, then touch up the flowers.
Enough greens; time for flowers.
Wild Hyacinth and Chinese Houses.
There is so much variety, and I’m trying to make it look natural rather than arranged.
I think this is finished! I titled it “April in Three Rivers” and sent a photo of it to a lady who expressed an interest during the Studio Tour. She wants it! I can paint it again for you- 8×10″, $125 plus tax. 
That was so fun that I began a similar one, this time in the horizontal format.

But wait! What is all this?

Lots of skies.

This is how it looks when there is a stack of new paintings ready to begin. Sky is the farthest thing in a scene, so it goes on first.

6 Things I Learned in April

  1. If you don’t know how to tell a sheep from a goat, remember this: goat tails go up, sheep tails go down. (You are welcome – I’m sure this will be useful information to you at some time in your life.)
  2. Glazed ceramics are porous- who knew? We have this pretty bottle for dish soap sitting on the kitchen window sill. Trail Guy kept telling me that the outside of the bottle was slippery with soap, and I just couldn’t understand how that could be. Then one morning I saw what was happening:Soap is seeping through the almost invisible cracks in the glaze. Weird.
  3. Flying in a helicopter is magical. I always thought it was fun (except for that med-evac off Sawtooth when I was 16), but now I am convinced it is magical, EVEN WITH THE DOORS OFF! MAGICAL!

    I’ve walked on that road down there many times.
  4. If you make yogurt from scratch and use store-bought vanilla yogurt for the starter instead of leftover yogurt from your previous batch, it is REALLY good. (Yeah, I know, who makes their own yogurt?*)
  5. The place where the Dodgers play is called Chavez Ravine. No reason I should know this because this is a house of Giants fans (well, really only one, since I’m fairly indifferent to sports). Never heard of this until April when I drove past it and my sister, wife of a Dodgers fan, asked me to photograph it as we were passing AND a friend of mine was the recipient of the Dodgers make-a-wish type deal and mentioned Chavez Ravine. (No one in my life who loves the Dodgers reads my blog, so I could take this opportunity to really jab at them. But, as I mentioned, I am fairly indifferent to sports, so I’ll let the moment pass.)
  6. I’ve been doing Roman numerals wrong. I thought you could put smaller numbers to the left to subtract, but that only is acceptable on the number 9. So, 9 is IX, but 14 is XIIII. I think IXV is more efficient, but someone else made the rules. (I am taking the word of someone smarter and more educated than I am, but I haven’t consulted The Google yet.)
  7. UPDATE ON ROMAN NUMERALS: Only 4 and 9 use the “subtractive notation”. 4 is IV; 9 is IX. This means that 14 is XIV, not XIIII. So, I was right about smaller symbols on the left, but I did it the wrong way. I wonder how many of my painting series are numbered incorrectly?

*Me, that’s who. I make my own bread too. No, I don’t drive a Prius. . . they don’t come in stick. Besides, how smart is it to pay $30,000 for a car just to save some gas money? And what happens to the old battery when it is time to buy a new one? And doesn’t the making of the electricity to charge the battery have a more negative effect on the environment than burning gasoline?

Flowers in My Yard

April is the most beautiful month in Three Rivers and that includes my yard. Our yard. Trail Guy is great with the big stuff like heavy pruning, sprinkler systems, and power tools. I weed, plant stuff, and do girly pruning.

Ajuga grows in the shade and is a very low ground cover, except in April when it shoots up these blue spikes, which always show up purple in photos.
Lilac smells fantastic.
Fairy Lanterns are all over the hill on the backside of the property.
Lovely lavender – I have several varieties, all blooming at once. Never can remember how to tell French from Spanish, but I know this one isn’t English.
The blurry yellow blossom is a Jerusalem sage, about to grace us with its first flowers. The iris is a fantastic light periwinkle color, and that is rock rose in the background.
Fiesta flower is wild and goes bonkers all down one side of the driveway each year.
Rockrose!
Rock rose shrubs get kind of huge-ish, but my girly-type pruning keeps them in check.
Dutch Iris? Japanese Iris? Siberian Iris? Doesn’t matter – it is my FAVORITE.

The state flower, California poppies, always more orange than yellow when grown in a domestic yard.

P.S. I have one power tool, and when/if it starts, it is great. It is one of those “easy to use” rototillers called a Mantis. I call it other things when it won’t start. Sometimes I just use an old tool that Grandma gave me instead. She also gave me her love of flowers. Today is her birthday, but she isn’t counting birthdays in heaven.

Tiptoeing Along on Several Oil Paintings

Why tiptoeing? Because it feels slow and careful at this stage, like I am just feeling my way along, trying to be as careful as possible.

First up, Sawtooth, the commissioned oil painting.

Second, rebuild the Kaweah Post Office, also a commissioned oil painting.

Third, plant some grasses. (Oil paint grasses, not fescue or bermuda or dichondra or Kentucky bluegrass or. . .) There was more progress made, but the phone call came that it was time to rescue Piper from the vet, where he got civilized this week. $192. No such thing as a free cat. (Samson cost $132 – he was in better shape to start with.)

Sawtooth got its front ridges painted.
Then I flipped it over to paint the bottom and begin the greenery.
This one had its skyline just too rough, with things not the right heights. So, I repainted the sky, using it to shape the mountain tops.
This was begun all wrong, wrong, wrong.
Better now. Miles to go before I sleep. . .
I mixed up 3 shades of green and began building background. While doing this, I increased the sizes of the blooms and added many more.

April Distractions in Three Rivers

I tried to oil paint last Friday but the greenery and wildflowers overcame my sense of duty. So, Trail Guy and I drove up North Fork Drive to the end.

My palette was ready to go.
I worked on Sawtooth a little.
After telling Trail Guy that I’d heard the flowers were great up North Fork and staring out the window a bit, he said, “Let’s go now!”

The road was longer, rougher, narrower than I remembered and all very worth the drive.

The last 3.5 miles are unpaved.
This is Yucca Creek at the end of North Fork Drive.
That’s one narrow little footbridge over a massive old culvert pipe.
Wowsa.
The yellow flowers are called Madia.
Heading back down has a view of Ash Peak with a blooming yucca and bush lupine.
Looking over the edge down to the North Fork makes one glad to not encounter any oncoming traffic on that narrow road with no turnouts.
Poppies are yellower in the wild than in my yard.
The poppies on the hillsides are what gave California its name of “The Golden State”. (Bet you thought it was the gold rush)
I love Fairy Lanterns, AKA Satin Bells. Pink isn’t my favorite color, but it is rare enough in nature that it stands out.

After we got back home, I painted a little bit more. There is this commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth for a very patient customer, and it would be good to make progress.

Sawtooth’s shape is improving, and it is acquiring colors and texture.

Then, I got distracted again and thought that wildflowers would look great on a 6×18″ canvas. Can you see the possibilities here? (Put on your rose-colored glasses with me!)

Planning a wildflower oil painting.

More Easel Time

Remember the commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth? I do, really, I do. Please don’t worry, DV!

It looked like this after the first painting session.
Now the sky and upper half of the painting has another layer that is more dramatic, which means both the colors and contrast are stronger.

It was a rainy overcast day, and by the time I got to the Sawtooth part of the painting, the light was too poor to mix colors accurately. That wasn’t very important on the first layer, but it is increasingly important as the layers build.

So, I moved on to a Kaweah Post Office commission. SD asked me to paint another Kaweah Post Office IX for her. This one is number IXV. It should be XV, but I didn’t number one of my earlier Kaweah Post Office paintings. That happens a lot around here.

Kaweah Post Office IX was painted in 2013; its twin will be painted in 2018 with a few adjustments. It will be a fraternal twin, rather than an identical one.
Gotta start somewhere. . . Don’t worry, SD. I’ll paint until you are thrilled with the results!

As I was painting, I realized it would be helpful to see the one this was modeled after, because maybe this wasn’t the actual photo used for that one. Yea for a laptop.

A decent start.
Added to the drying rack (who is back there making all that noise??)

Easel Time, Take Two

I think that “take two” is movie talk. Since I only see a movie in a theater about once every two or three years, this is only hearsay. But we are here today to have a look at easel time, because I really did plant my feet in front of the easel. Several patient people are waiting for their paintings and might be getting worried that I have quit painting.

First, we have a Kaweah Post Office painting with a wonky-looking roof (Thank you, Nikki, my former drawing student who learned to see truth and speak truth, because drawing accurately is seeing accurately.)

Kaweah Post Office XIII as painted in 2015.

In the interest of self-preservation and professional dignity, IT WASN’T THAT FAR OFF! But it was off enough to warrant a patch-up. Besides, the flag is floating, and I am surprised that I forgot to put in the flagpole. (Maybe that’s why this one hasn’t sold. . .)

Using my angle finder tool, I corrected the angle and drew it on in yellow paint.
I corrected the roof, added a flagpole, added tiny white dots to the flag, and corrected all sorts of things. Where was the quality control when I painted this the first time??
Lots of work ahead at the easels, thanks to a couple of weeks of distractions, interruptions, events, trips, and plain procrastination. Where shall I begin? 
With the smallest and easiest one. . . easing into easel time here. . .

Next!

If I can’t be out there walking in it, I’ll just stand here and paint it. Someone who came by during the studio tour asked if I’d email her a photo of this when it is finished so she can decide if she’d like to buy it. I said, “Sure, but if someone shows up to pay for it first, they’ll get it and I’ll paint it again if you’d like it.” A bit awkward, but it would not make sense to put a painting on hold and lose a sale when there is no commitment.
The road is clearer in this one, although only slightly. The greens in the photo are overly bright, so while painting, I look out the window and do some correcting to the color.
Three drying. Notice the shingle siding on my studio next door? 😎

To be continued. . .

Easel Time

Have you noticed that the word “easel” is pretty close to the word “easy”?

It’s merely a word illusion. Nothing easy about being at an easel. 

This fact, combined with April as the most beautiful month in Three Rivers, has made it even less easy to plant my feet in front of the easel recently.

But, as I pointed out in the Eight Things I Learned in March blog post, often we must parent ourselves. (“STAY IN YOUR ROOM UNTIL YOU HAVE FINISHED YOUR MATH!”) So, I planted my feet in front of the easel in spite of the distractions.

Wanna see some of the distractions? I know you are interested.

In my backyard
Two brodiaea, Wild Hyacinth and Pretty Face, along with Common Madia
The South Fork of the Kaweah River
Pretty Face
Fairy Lanterns
Another  distraction, AKA Piper

Forget easel time and painting for today’s blog. See you on Monday. . .