I shoved the couch to the right, covered it with the tarp, and tackled the remaining branches.
I forgot to take photos for a few hours, after shoving the couch back to the far left side. The next goal was to show depth where the new branches overlapped. This keeps the tree from looking like a cardboard cutout or flat paint. I want it to look as if it could lift off the wall (aiming high. . . )
A tree guy stopped by to look at it and give me his opinion (I asked him) —balanced, realistic, believable? After receiving the Gene Castro Seal of Approval, I moved ahead with confidence, tapping on some leaves.
When I was finished (because I was hungry again—could bring lunch, but I don’t want to spend time there not painting!) it looked like this.
One day is all that is necessary to complete the leaves and a few additional details. This has been an easy job in terms of commute (2 miles) and accessibility (indoors, 2 ladders but no extension ladder). Plus, I am at my church*, with lots of people coming and going, a very social and productive place.
As I work on the tree, it feels as if I am making no progress. I finally figured out why: it is because I am painting the same stuff over and over and over. Branch, twig, twig, twig, branch, twig, twig, twig, twig…
It also looks insignificant when seen with the entire wall, so the photos from Wednesday’s painting session are mostly focusing on the tree.
This is my view from the ladder.
I climb down the ladder, stand and stare, decide what needs to be thickened, tapered off, added, filled in. . . Then I climb up the ladder and try to recognize the spots that I decided to fix. Then when I can’t recognize them because it is too close and looks different, I climb back down the ladder to try again to memorize the particular spots, then climb back up the ladder to make the additions and changes, before I see something different to add, which would cause me to lose my place again.
When it got too confusing, I got my darker and lighter browns out so that I could create a bit of bark and a sense of branches overlapping.
After about 5-1/2 hours of this, I was hungry, cold, and confused. Hungry because breakfast was a long time ago, cold because I chose to not use the heater, and confused because it all looks alike. Fret not, I did take a couple of breaks because there were other people working at church on Wednesday. I warmed up in the office, got sidetracked with some sorting and tossing with the secretary, learned some fun things about the pastor, tried some fancy coffee with the janitress. (Woman janitor=janitress?)
I haven’t decided how far to the left to grow the branches, so I put the furniture back in place to see how it all looks together, hoping the answer will present itself on the next day of painting.
Pay no attention to the ladders in the corner or the inverted table on the rug. It’s there to flatten out the folds. When we began discussing how to make the room more inviting, my cohort mentioned that she just got new living room furniture and then I got all excited to grow an indoor tree. Thus, this project was born.
So, more branches and twigs, a decision about the length, more texture, some fuzzy green leaves the way they are looking in reality, outside, right now in Three Rivers, because this will be a one-season tree. I can’t make February last forever in real life, but I can do it on the wall.
P.S. Nope, not painting the underside of the soffit; I am NOT Michelangelo.
The first one was 3 stories high in someone’s living room. This was the first time such an idea was put forth to me, and it opened a new chapter in my muralizing life.
The second one was painted in an empty house as the owners were preparing to turn it into a vacation rental.
My church* hired a new pastor, and things are rockin’ and rollin’ (not literally). Many changes are taking place, for which I am grateful, excited to be part of, and will tell you about the ones that are relevant to this blog.
This room is called the “multipurpose room”. For quite a few years, it was used as a “pilot room”, i.e. “Pile it in there”. When the junk was finally all gone, several of us put our heads together to find a way to make the room feel warm and welcoming, and to truly serve multiple purposes.
Someone brought in comfy furniture for one end, and then I was allowed to go at it with paint.
Lots of climbing up and down to study and decide where to place the next branches and twigs, what to fatten, what to twist a bit more, etc.
When I got to the end of my breakfast (made it until 2:30), it looked like this.
So many decisions. So slow. Here’s what remains: more branches, more twigs, darken/lighten so it creates depth and layering, add texture, add leaves, add a few birds, moss, grasses. . . ?
Good thing it is indoors, because this is a rainy rainy rainy week.
Good sunlit photo but before it was quite finished.
When I was designing the Ivanhoe Library mural, I dug around for photos of a building that is cemented in my memory as a beautiful old structure. (Apparently, I’ve loved old buildings all my life.) I found a photo of the Ivanhoe School auditorium in Laura Spalding’s book Ivanhoe—the Town with Three Names: Klink, Venice Hill, Ivanhoe. I was confused that her book identified it as “Ivanhoe Community Hall”, but I recognized it instantly as the building where I learned to play the clarinet*, gave my campaign speech to be the school president**, checked out books, and played the piano for the jazz band.
When I finished painting it, I added “Ivanhoe School Auditorium” and then thought it would be nice to provide the year it was built along with the year it went away.
Like most things in life, that was easier said than done. The librarian called the History Room at the main library branch, and was told it was built in 1932 and demolished in 1948.
Nope and nope. Architecturally speaking, it is clearly older than 1932, and since I graduated from Ivanhoe in 1973, I KNEW it was standing past 1948.
So, I went to Visalia (had to go anyway to retrieve Momscar with its new starter) and visited the History Room. Library Historian Hunter and I pulled three thick folders from a filing cabinet and started flipping through all sorts of old papers.
Like much in life, the building’s dates are complicated, far too complicated to simply put as “19XX – 19??” on the mural.
Here’s what we learned in two different places, along with Spalding’s book:
It was built around 1926 as a community hall. Then, maybe in 1932, or maybe 1937, “the community, who being unable to meet the indebtedness gladly disposed of it to the school.” One source says it was moved in 1932, another says it was moved in 1937; a third source says it was moved in spring of 1939.
Nowhere have I found the year that the building was demolished. Maybe demolition records aren’t kept, because the demolishers are embarrassed to be part of destroying history, or maybe because it is viewed as a hazard or junk to be gotten rid of, rather than something old and beautiful that has reached the end of its functional life.
So, the painting of the old school auditorium will not have dates, only its title as I recall it: Ivanhoe School Auditorium.
When I was a regular patron of the Ivanhoe library, sometimes we had to go to the main library in Visalia in order to find enough good material to write a term paper or do a report. What is now the children’s library used to be the entire Visalia library, which I found to be stunning and overwhelming. I also thought the building was beautiful, because it is. The architectural style is like the house my dad grew up in, built in 1932. (The house—the library was completed in 1936, so it was clearly the same era.)
P.S. I drew the library in 1989 before the new one got built.
P.P.S. I also stopped by a retail store in Visalia to see a childhood friend from Ivanhoe who told me the school library wasn’t in the bay window but was in a door off the porch. That’s why I added a hint of a door on the otherwise dark and bland front porch. I sure would like to find more photos of the building, both in and out, but those were the days before everyone carried a camera.
The mural looked like this when I arrived in Ivanhoe (photo from the end of the previous painting day—I arrived early enough that the light wasn’t yet on the mural.)
After talking to an old friend who remembered more details than I, I added a hint of a door on the porch of the old auditorium. (Please excuse the poor quality of the After photo!)
Then I added orange blossoms. These are only important if you are up close and inspecting the mural; they are irrelevant if you are riding a fast horse.
Next, I flailed around for a while, trying to figure out where to work next. The idea that I might finish had me a little wound up, wondering if it was possible, wondering how to prioritize. The rooster rose to the top of the list—all those colors!
Here are the feet, before and after.
Next, I sat on the ground, now redwood chips rather than mud, and began the quail.
I stood back, studied the mural while visiting with my cousin on the phone, and decided that the blue sky in the Twin Buttes inset was too blue, too flat, too perfect.
Okay, now let’s look at the whole thing. This was a quick-quick-quick-before-the-tree-shades-it shot.
Some more staring and thinking brought me to the conclusion that despite simplifying the packing label, I needed to not abbreviate Klink to Klink Citrus; the name was Klink Citrus Association. And since I couldn’t figure out how to legibly paint “Tulare County, California” on the wall’s rough surface, I simply added “Ivanhoe.”
Throughout the day, I touched up a few more things, brightening the arms of the wind machine, tightening up the edges of the smudge pots, closing up gaps around some of the insets, putter, putter, tinker, tinker.
Enough, already! I signed it. Even with the guidelines of the bricks, my name went crooked. YOU TRY WRITING YOUR NAME WITH A PAINTBRUSH WHILE LYING ON THE GROUND!
Okay, one more photo before it was completely finished but also before the shadows hit it.
One last look.
I loved working on this mural—the commute, the ease of not working on ladders, the subject matter, the neighborhood, being at the library of my youth, meeting the various people who stopped by, the roosters, the patrolling dogs and yowling cats, all of it.
THANK YOU, IVANHOE!
P.S. An inside mural begins today, Lord willing, etc. . . if I do begin, it will be on the blog on Wednesday. Tomorrow is a little history tidbit about the mural.
Not literally. Figuratively. There is a difference in these two terms despite the language butchering (figurative, not literal) that is commonplace.
Using a template to convert a book from Word to InDesign is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen??
Converting the InDesign file to a PDF for proofreading is supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?
Getting a 1099 form used to mean waiting for the mail. Now you “just log in and download and print”. Supposed to be easy. Sure, if everything works. When does that happen?
“Go digital” to get your Social Security statements—“It’s Fast, Easy, and Secure”. Easy?? Who are you kidding?
“Get 85 Free Prints A Month” from Photo Affections! It’s fast and easy! Sure, except for all the hidden prompts, tiny clever little tools to guess at, and oh, by the way, only one print per image is allowed for free.
My head is about to explode.
Let’s just look at a few photos and try to regain our balance.
The beginning of spring in my yard: flowering quince, daffodils, germander
Morning light on Comb Rocks
Presbyterian Church: you can bet they never put kraft paper over their windows because they have stained glass with local wildflowers.
Now maybe I’ll go try to balance my checkbook with all those Paypal entanglements, debit cards, and oh, oops, I used the wrong account to pay for business expenses, and what was that automatic deduction for? That’s right, the printing 10-key machine makes illegible numbers, so I’ll clean it. Well, oops, now it won’t print. (Felt great to shove it in the trash, so there.)
Never mind. Today I am painting the mural in Ivanhoe, listening to roosters crow, dogs bark, cats yowl, and cars go past. Nothing on the computer, very very peaceful. I’ll show you all about it on Monday.
This stack of ten canvases was staring at me accusingly. So rude.
The only way I could get them to shut up was to start working on them. I spread out the smallest canvases with their photos, mixed up a pile of sky color to cover eight of the beginning backgrounds, along with a nondescript dark background color for two that are different from my usual Mineral King scenery paintings.
The two Sequoia gigantea are finishing their drying session. No hurry; I delivered one still sort of dampish to Kaweah Arts, and these two are just back-ups.
Some of the canvases had a base coat, and last week I drew the basic shapes in pencil. I don’t always do this, but for some unknown reason felt compelled to do that last week. Maybe I just wanted to make the starting out session more accurate. . . maybe I thought it would make the paintings go faster. . . or maybe I just felt like drawing in pencil. Yeah, that.
As I was taking inventory of Mineral King paintings on hand, I kept returning to this 8×10” of White Chief, which was painted from a particularly dramatic photo taken by Trail Guy, early one season. The painting just didn’t slap me in the eyes like the photos do, so I guessed at what might make it better and then fiddled around with it a bit more.
Before
After
Better? Maybe. Hard to say when the upper one was scanned and the lower one photographed with my inferior phone camera. If it sells in 2026, I will conclude that it has been improved. If not, I’ll just break all my brushes, slash my canvases, and see if I can find a job eradicating typos somewhere.
I could be oil painting but seem to want to pull weeds, write blog posts, text with a friend about a difficult situation, make yogurt, and write a few letters.
We have a bit of a situation, but as a wise friend has said, “When you have a problem and you have money to fix it, you don’t have a problem; you have an inconvenience.
Prolly a starter. Maybe a fuse. Not the ignition switch or the battery. Thank goodness for the good pick-em-up truck (2003) AND the Botmobile (1986). Thank goodness for AAA, for upping the towing package 2 years ago, for Valero Bros. in Woodlake, and for Foreign Autoworks’ new owner, Frank.
We have a new pastor at church, someone with lots of energy and ideas. He joined the 50% of the congregation who wanted to remove the kraft paper from the front windows and asked a pair of fearless monkey-dudes to help. See if this doesn’t cause your guts to squeeze a bit. . .
Deciding what to paint for the Silver City Store this coming summer felt like a daunting task. There is no excuse for procrastination, and the better I plan, the better the sales. So, suck it up, Buttercup.
The first step in planning is to look at the available Mineral King paintings. (For my out-of-the-area readers, Mineral King is a beautiful alpine valley in Sequoia National Park; each summer I sell art 4 miles below the valley at a resort in a little cabin community called “Silver City”.)
It also involves evaluating how many paintings sold, both by subject and by size. I am painting to satisfy a clientele, rather than just doing whatever “moves” me. Thank goodness it is all very beautiful.
This planning part isn’t so beautiful. It’s methodical, tedious, and would be easier if I had a crystal ball. Instead, I have records, intuition, common sense, and piles and piles of photos, both the paper variety and on the laptop.
It is helpful to line them out by subject and size.
It is also helpful to take a break and walk somewhere. (No powerlines in Mineral King or Silver City to clutter the views up there, because it is remote, the Land of No Electricity.)
Rosemary in bloom. . . so far this year, February has been impersonating spring.
Now I have ten new paintings to produce, ranging in size from 6×6” to 8×16” and 10×10”.
I’ve attached hanging hardware and assigned inventory numbers. Next I need to give them titles, such as “Sawtooth #209”.
Not really; I think it is only somewhere in the 60s.
