After a week of rain, sunshine is predicted for Saturday.
One More Autumn Break from Painting
That flowering pear tree!! A friend and I took a walk around her neighborhood. It is the only traditionally laid out group of homes in Three Rivers, often referred to as “the suburbs” for its resemblance to typical neighborhoods in the non-foothill towns of our county. (Yeppers, we are special here.) Check out this house! […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 5
Before I finished layering the background things, I blew off any discipline about painting, ignored conventional wisdom about The Way You Are Supposed to Paint, and I launched into detailing. When I draw, I work from top to bottom, left to right. This way I don’t rest my hand on finished parts, thus not smearing […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 4
About the mural The threat of rain prevented me from beginning on Friday. More relevant:the powers that be did not offer me a key to their building, which means I can only paint on Fridays. This coming Friday I will be setting up for the Holiday Bazaar, and the following Friday is part of Thanksgiving […]
A Break From Painting to Enjoy Autumn
I had a job about 100 years ago at a vocational school. It was a terrible job, because one of my duties was to collect on unpaid student loans. One of my few good memories of working there was meeting a student named “Autumn Eve”. I didn’t get to know her very well (fraternization was […]
A New Mural
Three years ago, the county allowed elected supervisors to have a bit of free rein on things like murals in their districts. My supervisor asked me to paint a mural on the Ivanhoe library, the beloved library of my youth. You can read about it here, here, here, and here. If you don’t want to […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 3
On Monday, you saw this version of the custom oil painting of a Mineral King scene. Next, I put more paint on the sky and worked more carefully on West Florence. (The humanoid is still a mess.) Time to rescue the humanoid from embarrassing me. Wait, time to rescue me from the embarrassment of the […]
New Oil Commission, Chapter 2
Here is my usual collection of thoughts about custom art: This is too hard, I’m a washed-up has-been, why does anyone think I am qualified? And: These people are counting on me and I’d better get started because it is going to be hard and take a very long time. Finally: Just paint, you Goober! […]
Thank You, Veterans
(Including you, Cousin Bruce. . . You did what you had to do because that is how we were raised, came home to national disrespect, married a wonderful woman, made great kids, and built a good life. I always looked up to you, both literally and figuratively. We will miss you.)
New Oil Painting Commission
“Commission” means someone is paying me to paint custom art for him. Them. Her. Shhhh, I think it will be a Christmas present. Let’s call the customer Mister. You can decide if it is a man, a woman, or several humans. Mister decided on 20×20”, a square format. The canvas arrived, and I put a […]