Author: cabinart

Two Large (Not Too Large)

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Large One

Remember this mess?

It’s getting incrementally better.

It seems as if the paint dries more slowly on Masonite board than on canvas. Of course, that could be the result of ongoing winterlike weather.

Large Two

What is this elongated canvas for??

It is for the sketch on the bottom!

Mr. Customer has a memory of seeing snow covered Sierra from Highway 198 on a brilliant day in January of 1969, a year similar to this year in precipitation amounts. We have been exchanging photographs and discussing ideas for several months, and he has decided on a 12×36″ painting. It is a pleasure to be painting more of my favorite scenery, the quintessential* Tulare County scene, for someone who appreciates it as much as I do!

*purest, most characteristic, ultimate

Petite Poultry Paintings

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It was a little too dark for painting well. But these petite poultry paintings could be painted by holding them in my left hand, tilted toward the window for better light while painting.

I added a second layer to each one.

Then I did my favorite part: drew the details with a tiny paintbrush.

From there, they got moved to the living room in the house with the wood stove for drying. They will look better when scanned (after they dry, of course), because there is that bothersome shine to wet paint which makes photographs look inadequate.

Cluck I, Cluck II, and Cockadoodle-doo, completed!

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Nine New Things Learned in March

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Each month I wonder if I have learned anything. I seem to forget much of what I post in these monthly learned lists and wonder if anyone else does too. If you are curious, and if your screen shows Categories with searching capabilities, you can click on Learned List and see as many of the 71 past lists (I began doing this in 2017) as you care to waste, umm, no, spend time reading. Here is March’s tidbits for you to mull over (and then forget).

Masonite can only be ordered in 100 sheet bundles so local builder supply stores don’t stock it; you must go to one of those dreaded big box stores.
Three Rivers Drug Store closed. They’ve been in our town since 1963, and it will be quite an inconvenience for many residents.
Making ricotta cheese looks easy when one reads the recipes; in reality, it’s a different story.I ended up with about 1/2 cup of very squishy cheese and a whole lot of whey to use in baking bread. It might make sense to make ricotta if one owned a cow and had a tremendous amount of milk to use up. I’ll stick to making yogurt.
People need to keep their culverts cleaned out, even in dry years. If they don’t, they will lose parts of their driveways in wet years.
The Mineral King road is wrecked; it will get fixed. (That is Tulare County’s problem).
The East Fork flume is wrecked; it might get fixed. (That is SCE’s problem).
Chocolate navels are very peculiar in appearance, and mild in flavor. They do NOT taste like chocolate; the name comes from the brownish color. I wonder how they’ll do in the markets.
Ringing the bell is something that cancer patients do when they complete chemotherapy. I learned this from a blog I follow, called The Frugal Girl. Someone in the comments mentioned that she “rang the bell”, and many of the other commenters congratulated her, so I looked it up.
The liquid surrounding canned beans is called “aquafaba” and can be used as a substitute for eggs in baking. It can also be whipped up like egg whites. Isn’t that bizarre?? I regret all the gallons I have wasted when making hummus: “drain the beans”. . . NO!! DON’T DRAIN THEM!! THINK OF THE COST OF EGGS!

P.S. I added the word “new” to the title because the search engines give me a higher rating with that word there. . . sometimes I find myself caving to such nonsense. If I learned it, then it must be new, eh?

Bonus: Spring Walk in Three Rivers

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This is an afternoon walk at Salt Creek earlier this week. No chit-chat, no April fooling, just photos.

Cluck I, Cluck II, and Cockadoodle-doo

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This rooster oil painting hung around for awhile. Almost immediately after it (finally) sold, someone requested another, along with 2 little square paintings of hens.

That’s a fairly good beginning. These won’t take too long to complete, and then I can return to the odd job.

Odd Job Begun

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My current odd job is simply a painting of a mountain landscape. The odd part is that I am painting it 16-3/8″ x 29-7/8″ on a piece of Masonite.

After Trail Guy cut it, I covered it with 5 or 6 coats of flat white housepaint, sanding between each layer for a smooth surface.

Meanwhile, I studied the two photos, provided by the customers.

Neither one is the right proportions. Each has its own good points, so I combined them into a rough sketch, the proportions of the window opening and board. This is what I sent to the customers for approval.

The customers were very happy, so I sketched it onto the board.

Then, I put a very thin first layer over the white primer.

When that is dry, I will continue layering, building up color, tightening up detail, until eventually I won’t be able to think of any way to make it better.

Then I’ll do the usual finishing steps: sign, photograph, varnish.

Because I know you want to know, all I know is that this is somewhere north of Lake Tahoe.

commission oil painting oil paintings

Odd Job and Phooey

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A woman contacted me via my connection with the Arts Consortium This is Tulare County’s designated arts council, an active and helpful group.

She had a request for a custom oil painting, which on the surface sounded normal. We began discussing via email, and eventually I learned the odd particulars of her job. She has a window in her home which looks out onto the neighbor’s wall, about 1 yard away. The window is a very specific measurement, and she would like a painting to exactly fill the space, 16-3/8 x 29-7/8″.

That is not a standard size. (Bet you already guessed that one.)

The customer, living in a city, has access to many businesses, such as a place that makes custom canvases.

Before she called the company, I remembered that when I first was learning to oil paint, I painted on Masonite, primed with many coats of flat white house paint. Back in 2006, I bought a sheet of 4×8′ Masonite (also called “panel board”), along with a table saw (which I put in the front passenger seat of Fernando*), and then Trail Guy cut the boards to the sizes that I requested. (Nope, I’m not risking my fingers on that machine.)

I looked through my scraps, but none were large enough to cut to size.

So, I took the pick-em-up truck to Vise-grip (AKA Visalia) to buy a sheet of Masonite, hoping I could buy a 1/2 sheet. At the least, I was hoping they’d be able to cut the full sheet into 4 pieces, but just in case they couldn’t, I left Fernando at home.

Alas, the correct saw at the big box store was broken. So, I bought the giant sheet and some really helpful guy with a really foul mouth helped me load it after he saw me wrestling with it in the parking lot. (He was not an employee: remember this was a big box store, not known for helpfulness).

Trail Guy figured out how to cut it to the exact dimension.

Then, when he was figuring out where to store the excess, HE FOUND A SCRAP FROM BEFORE THAT WAS BIG ENOUGH!!

Phooey.

*Fernando is my ’96 Honda Accord coupe. “Coupe” means two doors. You’re welcome. I try to expand people’s vocabularies here.

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Springtime Takes Precedence over Work

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Instead of showing you my current art projects or discussing the unending challenges and rewards of being a fulltime artist in Tulare County, today is another bonus peek at spring in Three Rivers.

These photos were taken on Friday morning.

Tomorrow I’ll show you my current odd job.

Three Rivers

Spring in Three Rivers

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There have been ongoing diversions and distractions lately. In spite of loving what I do for a living, there are many things I would rather do when it is spring in Three Rivers.

Early last week it snowed low again. The white snow on the peaks blended with the white sky, so all you can see is a tiny hint of Moro Rock.

The measuring stick on the downstream side of the Dinely Bridge got washed away in the flooding.

This is looking upstream, and maybe you can get a slight hint of how low the snow is.

I spent some time helping friends prepare the yard where their daughter’s wedding will be. We kept taking breaks because of the rain.

She wants to get married in front of that tipi thing.

I had a little trouble being efficient with my time, because the four black cattle (cows are females that have given birth; these are either heifers or steers, for beef) kept asking for my prunings, and the smaller black creature kept wanting me to toss the Frisbee.

Did you know that black steers have dark gray tongues? I didn’t. It was very challenging to capture that peculiarity with a camera.

You can see a little bit of the tongue on the left side of the photo.

They were highly entertaining.

Apparently they thought I was too.

This reminds me of a joke about some guys at a diner. They asked about the special, and when they were told it was cow tongue, one of them said, “Oh gross! I’d never eat anything that came out of a cow’s mouth. I’ll just have some eggs.”

One of the trees I was pruning was a Meyer lemon, and it inspired me to take this photo.

Meanwhile, it was raining on the flowering quince, which is usually in bloom around mid-February. Not this year!

Another chance to soak up the brilliant color of the fantastic germander.

I love spring in Three Rivers. Can you tell?

Morning Walk up Salt Creek

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This morning I went for a walk up Salt Creek (Bureau of Land Management property). It was so beautiful that it warrants an extra blog post of photographs.

The first photo was taken at the Dinely bridge while waiting for my walking buddy to arrive. The rest are on the BLM property.

There is a new parking lot at the top of Salt Creek Road, but the gate prevents anyone from using it. We went that way because the 2 footbridges crossing Salt Creek got washed away.