What is Art Administration?

I don’t know what “art administration” means. Doesn’t it sound important?

Most days, Trail Guy asks me what I plan to do. Often the answer is “paint”; about every two weeks or so I say “administrative tasks”. 

What this means is tending to the business of an art business. Going to lovely places and painting is only part of being an artist full time.

This is what an administrative day can look like:

  1. Find boxes and packaging material to ship two paintings. One is almost right, but where is the box cutter so I can make it exactly right? Wait, I need a ruler too. . . where’s the bubble wrap? The packing tape?
  2. Take all the newly dry paintings from the painting workshop to the real studio and scan painting after painting. Oh wait, that one has a weird green spot in the sky – must have been against one that wasn’t quite dry yet. Set it aside to touch up later.
  3. Wait and wait and wait for a scheduled phone call with potential web designer. He said 10, sent an email that had something to do with The Google that said 6, I replied and said no, TEN, and he didn’t call. Then he emailed at 10:15 to ask if he could still call and say he was sorry for the confusion. Too much communicating going on here, but I kept scanning paintings until he finally called.
  4. Long and satisfying phone call; make some decisions.
  5. Put together a bank deposit.
  6. Drive to town (just Three Rivers, a wonderfully self-contained “village”). Drop by the library first and pick up a book with wonderful photos because that is one of the many ways that an artist trains her brain and eye. Visit with the librarian who happens to room with my niece. (Tulare County is small.)
  7. Go to the Post Office to send the packages, run into a friend who needs to find a web designer and  pass along the (as of yet unproven) web designer’s info to her.
  8. Go to the bank and see a former drawing student/friend/neighbor who asks, “Do you have a website?” SAY WHAT?? I clearly haven’t done enough advertising here in my own town!!
  9. Run into the grocery store and see the friend who encouraged me to design and publish coloring books; her business is now closed, but I was able to encourage her in her new job. (no, not a grocery clerk – she was there repping a product to the store owner)
  10. See a friend on the way home, one I help with her vacation rentals from time to time (so far have painted 3 murals for her in those rentals). Stop to catch up a bit.
  11. Get home to a phone message about a messed up order. My supplier messed up the order, I emailed, and the owner of the company called to ask how to make it right. WOW! That’s rare great service! Longish phone conversation.
  12. FedEx arrives with an order of canvases; I unpacked the box, and began to assign inventory numbers and photos to various sizes. I’ve been waiting for this order!
  13. Put hanging hardware and titles on the backs, begin a few quick paintings, and realize that all the newly scanned paintings need to be entered onto the website.
  14. Blog.

There are more things I haven’t finished, but it is almost quitting time. Really?? I could work until 10 p.m., but that would be rude. Besides, there are statistics about working longer than 9 hours; studies show that productivity drops. I think I could keep pushing, but there is no real sense of urgency, other than answering an email inquiry about a pencil drawing commission, and another about the book I am currently editing. 

Since you made it to the end of this blog post about “art administration”, you deserve a treat. How about an ice cream cone?

Worth It, oil on board, 8×10″, private collection (fancy Artspeak for “SOLD”)

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 4

This is an 8×8″ of my tied-in-second-place Mineral King oil painting subject, the Honeymoon Cabin. It was part of the resort; then Disney bought up parts of the resort in hopes of building a ski area. That didn’t happen, and now this little cabin is a museum of artifacts and photos of Mineral King.

You saw it yesterday hanging on the wall drying. In my normal manner, I got things a little mixed up, posted yesterday as #4 and had today as #3. Then I switched things a few times and finally corrected it, but here is the Honeymoon Cabin at an earlier stage. I might be a bit dizzy from the oil fumes, or maybe the turp. Could be the propane, but I doubt it; the oil painting workshop room is extremely well ventilated (read “drafty”).

Oil paintings don’t dry very quickly; that is both the good thing about oil paint and the bad thing. Trail Guy set up this handy little shelf in front of the heater in the painting workshop/studio, and that will help things move along.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 3

Will these Mineral King oil paintings ever be finished? Yes. Then I’ll have to decide what to paint next. I’ll still need more Mineral King for my inventory (I’m painting ahead for the first time ever – finally have learned that summer starts on Memorial Day weekend and this year I will NOT be surprised.)

Some of these look like the same paintings as in other photos because they are the same paintings. I move them all around depending on their state of dryness. Some of them just look the same because the subjects are the same, only with differing amounts of snow or water or with different lighting.

The bridge is still a little bit too hard for me. It will have to wait until I am out of my Mineral King Oil Painting Factory Mode.

Aren’t these little 4×4″ boards sweet? I can’t sign my name on that size, so only put J.B. They will each sit on a tiny wooden easel, and will be $30 each. A man from Marin Co. told me he saw 2×2″ paintings sitting on tiny easels at $120 each.

Nope. Not moving to Marin County.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 2

Can you see that several paintings have some new paint on the mountains now? I paint from back to front; that means sky first, the farthest mountains next.

Wait! What is this? 

I decided to finish the largest one first. Then, I got close to finishing the 2nd largest one. The need to get some something completed overtook the efficiency of the assembly line method – too much delayed gratification there.

Then I went through my photos and made some quick decisions about those boards that used to contain vegetable and fruit paintings. The light was waning, so I just did some quick first layers. 

Hubba hubba, chop chop, git-‘er-dun. When the top three selling subjects are painted in sufficient numbers, I will go through my photos and choose other Mineral King subjects that challenge me a bit more. Different scenes mean different colors, shapes and textures.

Field Trip

Last Sunday afternoon, we drove down to Lake Kaweah to go walking among the cockleburs. I think the dam was built in 1962 or ’63, so I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t there. 

It is sort of ugly, but interesting at the same time. There are nicer places to walk in Three Rivers, but variety is a good thing. Keeps you and your brain from settling into a rut, something my paternal grandmother preferred to call a “groove”, which she said made for smoother travel.

There are old home sites and even a former swimming pool. A metal detector might yield some interesting results.

pool tile and cockleburs

The bridge is interesting with its styling in the concrete. It crosses Horse Creek.

We followed Horse Creek for awhile. Not much to it, but it became messy, so we went back to the road and followed it into a flock of red-wing blackbirds. Raucous critters. The mallards and snowy egrets are quieter. We encountered another bridge across Horse Creek and headed back. The flower is mustard.This was a field trip just for fun, not for work. I don’t think there is anything pretty enough down there to paint, although a view of Alta Peak and Moro Rock with the lake in the foreground might appeal to a few folks. Minus the cockleburs. . .

11 Things I Learned in January

Happy Birthday, Robin!!

Some of these things are new, and some got relearned. 

  1. If you have an indoor/outdoor cat, don’t get too attached. Nature is just out your door, and it is brutal and wild. Bye-bye, Samson, the bitey Bengal boy. Still, we think it is better to let a cat be a cat instead of trapping it inside.
  2. If you don’t have a cell phone, it is harder to order from Amazon. They want you to sign in, receive a call and then sign in a second time with a code that comes through the phone. This doesn’t work when you are at your mom’s house, wanting to order something for her. Still, I think it is better to not have a cell phone.
  3. The Blackwing Colors colored pencil set of 12 can be used to obtain almost as many colors (via layering) as either Polychromos or Prismacolor sets of 120 colors. Score another point for simplicity!
  4. There is a very fine upholstery and wood-working shop in downtown Visalia called Quality Upholstering. I’d heard of them because they have been there 40 years!! They do great work with quick turnaround, and are a pleasure to deal with. 
  5. Lifesource Water Systems is The Answer To Bad Water from your household tap. Why did we wait so long to deal with the excessive chlorine?? Don and Shelley Lovelace have the franchise in Fresno and they are a pleasure and a delight to work with.
  6. I am more vain than I thought. A stranger referred to me as a “blonde”. My hair is brown, but the gray in it was deceptive to the stranger. I thought this would never enter my mind, but I have been considering hiding the gray.
  7. The History Chicks is an excellent way to learn some history. This is a podcast with 2 women telling the stories of various women, just talking as women do. Eavesdrop and learn (and they DON’T CUSS!)
  8. I learned how to make a secret book safe – it was harder than I expected. You can see the instructions here: Little Vintage Cottage. 
  9. As a bonus to #8, I learned how to make ModPodge. What is this? It is 1 cup white glue with 1/3 cup water, sold as a specialty craft product, but not at the local hardware store. (We used it in the 1970s to decoupage cut up posters onto grape trays; this was an important decorating skill.)
  10. There is a little battery pack charger thing. . . a friend jump-started my car from this little dealie, which put the stereo in a coma and temporarily disabled the automatic locking system (or maybe that was the dead battery). But, it was so compact and handy! (My amazing mechanic, since 1983, Mark at Foreign Auto Works in Visalia got everything repaired and I got a new battery.)
  11. The definition of middle-aged is 45-65, according to The Google. Who cares? A friend my age (58) and I had quite a discussion about it. She insisted we were old, and I was certain we are still middle-aged. Again, who cares? It was an interesting discussion, and caused me to think about the differences in our lives that give us differing views. She is a grandmother, has no living parents, lives in a college town in a wealthy area, to name a few; I am not a parent nor a grandparent, have a mom who is doing quite well (thank you for your concern), and live in the 3rd poorest and 13th least educated county in the state. Those things all influence one’s perspective.

Finished Oil Paintings

January was a productive month, all standard subjects that show off the beauty of Tulare County. November and December were good months, and my inventory got depleted. (This is a good thing.)

Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias XXXI, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×8″, $100 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias XXXII, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias #33, 11×14″, $275 plus tax
Timber Gap with Lupine, 8×8″, $100 plus tax
Orange #137, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sawtooth #23, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Farewell Gap IIXXX, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Orange #138, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
White Chief, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Sawtooth XXV, 6×18″, oil on wrapped canvas, $150 plus tax sold

There were actually FIFTEEN MORE, I am not kidding, FIFTEEN! But, they were too wet to scan at the time of this blog post. . . maybe that means they aren’t really finished. 

In case you think I am super-human, remember that the three largest were begun in December. I only FINISHED them in January. 

I need a nap.

What is that orange stuff?

Did you notice in the last photo of yesterday’s post that 4 little new paintings snuck onto the table?

These were the beginnings of some vegetable paintings – 2 pumpkins, a tomato and a pepper (and no, I don’t want to discuss whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable). After I figured out that the veggie market was saturated (at least among all my friends and family who buy my work, probably because they feel sorry for me) these just languished on a shelf, forgotten and unfinished.

Now that I am facing reality a little more realistically (from the Department of Redundancy Dept.), I know that these need to be Mineral King oil paintings. To fit on the miniature easels without toppling over, they need to be horizontal. I know they will have visible sky and that it will be at the top of the boards. 

Therefore, I have painted in some sky color. 

When I figure out which scenes to paint, I will hope that I put in enough sky. 

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory?

I feel like a Mineral King oil painting factory. Where is the variety? Where is the creativity? What’s going on here??

Part of the business of art is understanding what sells, and producing what one’s customers want to buy. This means painting the same things many many times if necessary. (Or I could become a secretary, or maybe a waitress, or maybe move to a large city and go into full time editing. . . )

The business end involves these steps:

  1. Looking at what has sold in the past in what sort of percentages, both the subjects and sizes
  2. Locating the right photos, which isn’t too hard because I have a decent filing system
  3. Assigning inventory numbers and titles
  4. Recording those on the photos, the backs of the canvases, the written list for the studio and the list on the computer
  5. Putting hanging hardware on the backs of all the canvases
  6. Ordering new canvases because I don’t have enough for the number of planned paintings
  7. Taking photos or scanning the finished work
  8. Blogging about it

The creativity happens at many levels that aren’t visible in this ugly stage.

  1. Taking reference photos (over a series of years)
  2. Editing the photos (keep this one, fix that one, crop these)
  3. Deciding what sizes and shapes to paint (this needs to be rectangular, that might work as a square)
  4. Mixing the paint colors (How many painters do you know who only work from the primary colors, hmm???)
  5. Drawing the image on the canvases (Is this creative? or is it simply a skill? or does it qualify for anything, since I do so much adjusting while painting each new layer?)
  6. Blogging about it.

Wait, what? Blogging about it appears on both lists. Go figure. . .

Writing this all down makes me want a strong cup of coffee.

The Visalia Electric Railroad Book!

Finally, finally, The Visalia Electric Railroad: Stories of the Early Years by Louise A. Jackson is a real book, both soft and hard cover, in our hands as of 1/19/2018.

Front cover

The softcover book is for sale in several places.

  1. Amazon (maybe – did my extensive efforts to list it really work?? More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .)
  2. My website (maybe – did my extensive efforts to add it under For Sale–Books–Visalia Electric really work?)
  3. Through Louise herself. If you know her, email or call her to ask for a copy.
  4. Through me directly – I will get a copy from Louise and get it to you.

But wait! How much?

The softcover is $21.50 including tax and shipping. Get it on this page, or by contacting me or Louise directly.

Is there a hardcover?

Yes. It is $26.50 including tax and shipping. Get it on this page, or by contacting me or Louise directly.

I already have this book!

Nope. You don’t. You might have the first edition, a saddle-stitched 8-1/2×11″ version, published in. . . I forget.

This is the 2nd edition, new and improved!, with twice as many photos that you can actually see and many never published before, AND the entire book has been edited, polished, rewritten. It is BEE-YOO-TI-FULLL!

But that is just my opinion as the editor, photo editor, book designer/formatter, proofreader, book shepherd and publisher. (Cabinart Books is a division of Cabinart. Doesn’t that sound big and official?)