During a mostly overcast weekend in Mineral King, we had a few moments of sun. A standard simple walk is to go down the road and back up the Nature Trail (Yes, I know it is a stupid name – “Wildflower Walk” seems more appropriate once summer arrives.)
The summer season has begun in Mineral King. Normally I post about Mineral King on Fridays. This week, I am beginning Mineral King on Wednesday.
Why? Because I am the boss of my blog.
There are formulas for “successful” blogging. I ignore most of them. I don’t know how to measure success on my blog other than by hearing from people who say they enjoy reading it. I don’t know how to find the stats and would rather blog than figure that stuff out.
Let’s just go to Mineral King and forget that techie stuff. Mineral King – Land of No Electricity or Internet (unless you pay for the password at the Silver City Store)
Thus we conclude today’s tour of an overcast day in Mineral King in late May.
Stay tuned for more tomorrow.
The morning light is inspirational.
What does “inspirational” actually mean?
Something that inspires. . . this light, this cat, together they inspire me to take photos.
Wait a minute here! I’m supposed to be inspired to make art.
Does this mess inspire you? It is an honest look at my drawing table while I am working on a coloring book.
The beautiful light and my sweet kitty inspire me to record the moment. The ideas in my head inspire me to draw. (My new friend Dan inspires me to blog when I am tempted to skip a day.)
Hi Perkins. Thank you for 17 years of loyal companionship, you Gopher Fiend.
Do you live near a beautiful place but don’t go there? I live in Three Rivers, just minutes from Sequoia National Park, and don’t go very often for a variety of reasons. It costs money, the lines are long, I am working. . . not all these things are true all the time, so I have to pay attention to when they are not true.
A few days ago, a friend invited me to join her for almost-full moon viewing, photography and sandwiches from Sierra Subs (the best food in Three Rivers).
She picked me up at 6, and we headed up to Hospital Rock, and then down the road to Buckeye Flat Campground. The yucca are in full fluffy bloom, and she was hoping to be able to photograph them by the light of the moon. (She is very knowledgeable about photography and has great gear.)
I gave my tripod to my nephew because he needed one and it no longer fits my life or cameras. So I decided to just try and hold still for the low light. My camera has lots of controls that don’t make sense to me, so I just experimented. The experiments, combined with some computer adapting, gave me these results.
I relearned some simple good things.
I got an email asking how to buy stuff from my website without Paypal. Some people don’t have or want a Paypal account. I understand; I feel that way about Facebook, Twitter, having a “smart” phone, and various other “conveniences” in life. (Don’t even get me started on “Square” . . . bah, humbug.)
I’ll put the instructions in red so you can find them amid all the boring visual examples.
When you put something in the shopping cart on my website, it ALWAYS takes more clicks than seems necessary, but think of it as a way to back out if you are in the midst of impulse buying.
When you are shopping, you’ll be on a page that says Cart. When you are done shopping, use the button that says “Proceed to Checkout”.
After entering all the information in boxes with a red asterisk, this is what shows at the bottom of the page (of course it might be a different product – this is just an example):
Click on the “Proceed to Paypal” button.
This page appears:
Click on the bottom thing that says “Pay with an online bank account. . .”
When you do, you’ll get this window:
You can click the button that says “I have a different bank” or on the tab that says “Debit or Credit Card”.
I don’t know what happens next, because I didn’t want to buy anything from myself.
If this all makes you too nervous, too much info out there on the World Wide Web, too many websites, clicks, pages and options, I accept checks in the mail. Real pen, real handwriting, real paper, real stamps, real dudes in uniforms putting real envelopes in my real P.O. Box. 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271.
Really!
Here is an appreciation picture for making it to the end of this boring but necessary instructional blog post.
No reason other than you might like trains and these are colorful.
Anyone want to guess the subject?
It is time for me to reorder Heart of the Hills, my original coloring book, AGAIN.
It is time for me to reorder Heart of Mineral King. WHAT?? I’ve only had it one week!
Hurry, hurry, step right up, order your copy today!
Feeling like a factory worker or a cog in a wheel, I mixed up some sky color oil paint so I could begin painting Mineral King. Five 6×6″ paintings, on the conveyer belt. (on the stereo, if you must know. Yes, I listen to a stereo that plays CDs. I drive a manual transmission, have a flip phone, and don’t own a microwave either.)
Okay, let’s get some other colors going. This is Farewell Gap, but not the classic scene we discussed on Monday.
(That’s the royal “we”, because as far as I know, it was a monologue rather than a dialogue.)
Oops. Forgot to photograph the in-between stages. These 2 paintings have just the first layer, and they’ll have to dry before I continue.
The morning sun hits that window with good intensity, so I propped them there. Meanwhile, the Oak Grove Bridge languishes in the background.
In the summer, the Silver City Store, 4 miles below Mineral King, sells original oil paintings for me. (For them too, because obviously they have to make money. Duh.)
The subject has to be Mineral King, (more duh, thank you Captain Obvious) and I paint the same scene over and over and over. Sometimes I paint Timber Gap, Sawtooth, or maybe a bridge or a trail. But most people just want this view, what I think of as the classic Mineral King scene:
It sells, I paint more. It sells again, I paint it again. Lucky you, if you bought it recently, because I’ve had lots of practice. This one is #20, but I didn’t always number my paintings, so I feel fairly confident in guessing that I’ve painted it 50 times. It’s on the doors of my painting studio, on the cover of the new coloring book (drawn in ink, not painted), and on the cover of The Cabins of Mineral King (in pencil, not oil paint).
Yesterday, the Mineral King coloring book arrived. Heart of Mineral King is the title, and it has 12 pages to color, plus some wildflowers on the insides of the covers. (One of the 12 pages is the title page, and 4 of the pictures are from the previous book, Heart of the Hills.)
A friend called me when I gave her a sample page of wildflowers from Heart of the Hills, because she wanted to know what color to make each one of the flowers. This made me laugh, because she had been coloring in another book, decorating owls in purples and pinks.
It also made me think that perhaps people would appreciate a hint. So this inside back cover page has a hint on the wildflowers.
Here is a peek at a brand new drawing. This is Empire Mt. (actually it is just the rock outcropping which is very visible but isn’t the peak) with some of the very charming Mineral King cabins.
Heart of Mineral King is available at the Three Rivers Mercantile and Kaweah River Trading Co. in Three Rivers. It is also available here on my website, and if you see me around, from the trunk of my car. On Memorial weekend it will be available at the Silver City Store, 21 miles up the Mineral King Road.
This one is smaller, so it is $12 rather than $15. Such a deal – a custom coloring book of everyone’s favorite mountain place in Tulare County. (Unless your favorite mountain place is Wilsonia)