This might take more time to read than you want to spend. You also might not find it interesting. You can skip it today—I’ll still be your friend.
In thinking about all the distractions and how long it has been since I last painted, I realized several things, the most glaring that. . .
. . . I missed several important selling opportunities here in Three Rivers this spring.
What a Slacker
(1) The Studio Tour weekend: Did it include Three Rivers this year? This event alternates areas each year. It used to be an exclusive Three Rivers event, but I stopped after it grew to involve the entire county. It eats up an entire weekend and involves many strangers coming to my home. No thanks.
(2) First Saturday —haven’t participated in that for many years because I don’t like waiting in my studio all day, jumping up every time I hear a car go past to see if they are pulling into my driveway, helping tottery people up my steps, and then being squished with strangers in my little shed of a studio. No thanks.
(3) A busy Easter weekend in the local shops. Oops, didn’t have anything new to take.
(4) I’m skipping the Redbud Festival too. Lots of work to set up, poor attendance in the last handful of years I’ve been there, standing around on numb feet (because when a vendor sits, it appears as if he is disinterested) and not wanting to work on Sunday all add up to No Thanks to festivals, bazaars, boutiques and all such events.
These guys would HATE having strangers invade their space—my painting workshop doubles as their home.
Good grief, it’s a wonder that I can stay in business as a local artist.
After 33 years of full time artisting, arting, scratching out a living with paintbrushes and pencils, I seem to have developed enough ways of earning a living that I can be a little pickier.
But then again, when I had a solo show in Tulare last August, I thought I had it all figured out and almost didn’t bring any pencil drawings. Boy was I wrong—pencil drawings were all that sold!
Such is the business of art. The best I can do is return phone calls and emails, finish work on time, keep improving old skills and learning new ones.
What I do
Editing, proofreading, book design, drawing in pencil, oil painting, painting murals, teaching regular group and private drawing lessons, giving talks about drawing, publishing books (coloring, cabins, and wildflowers for me; a variety of topics for other people), printing and selling notecards and calendars, designing and painting signs, logo design, teaching drawing and oil painting workshops, an occasional solo show, accepting commissions, selling through local shops, selling from my website and to people who call or ask to visit my studio—it all provides great variety, and continues to hold my interest.
This is a fantastic place to teach drawing lessons and workshops.
What I don’t do
Notice that the above list doesn’t include the aforementioned boutiques/bazaars/festivals, or lending my work to places of business so that they don’t have to buy it but can pretend that it is actually going to sell while people are in their offices for other purposes. It doesn’t include giving art to fund raisers or annual beg-a-thons (hint: I will give many charities who ask a free Wilsonia book, or even a certificate for a free private drawing lesson). There’s nothing on the list about participating in shows with entry fees, joining in themed group shows, or schlepping my art to decorate someone’s annual banquet to give people something to do while they are waiting for dinner to begin. I have done all of these things in the past and am thankful to be able to decline such “opportunities for exposure”. The beginners and youngsters can do those things, but I learned that a person can die of exposure. (Yes, I do make exceptions from time to time.)
Why would I ever want to leave here if I didn’t have to?
What About The Internet?
I also don’t sell via Facebook, Instagram, or Etsy. These platforms require copious amounts of time online, building up a following, participating in discussions and commenting and “liking”, being visible, staying connected. I try to keep my connections real rather than virtual, and as much as I try to limit screen time, I’m still on the computer way more than I want to be: photos, communications, photo editing, blogging, more photos, book editing, book design, and even more photos for many reasons and uses, plus reading and commenting regularly on a handful of blogs, which have brought a handful of sales and new friendships.
This was a fun place to give a talk about earning a living with art and how I got to where I am, which really, isn’t anything to brag about. It came with lunch, which we all needed after a very stressful hour before the meeting began of trying to make the powerpoint projector work. (Next time I’ll bring my trusty laptop.)
P.S. Notice also that the list doesn’t include showing in galleries: this means for-profit galleries. There are none in Tulare County, only non-profits, run by volunteers, where I have had my solo shows.
Conclusion
Using pencils, oil paint, and murals, I make art that you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.
P.S. I happily accept commissions, which means I make custom art for people. I hope you know that!
Never before (as far as I know) has one of my murals been messed with. I can’t say that anymore.
A couple of weeks ago, some stupid hon-yock threw an egg into the sky of my Ivanhoe mural. So, I told the librarian to have county maintenance see if it would wash off first, and if not, I’d go retouch it.
Eggs harden and that’s that, so I took a trip to Ivanhoe.
The damage was pretty subtle.
Have a closer look at the shiny streaks and drips:
All better now
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KH!
P.S. The sign also got spruced up, AFTER the stump and log it refers to got cut down and chipped up. (“We’re from the government and we’re here to help you”.)
We last saw this painting of Alta Peak and the Kaweah River (just “Kaweah River” without any identifying titles because here all the forks have come together) looking hopeful, but with much work ahead. It was time, nay, past time to get this done. (So many distractions!)
Here you can see how I progress from the farthest things to the closest things, adding more definition and detail as I work forward. I’m not saying this is either the only or the right way to paint—it simply is the way I learned and what works best to achieve the level of detail that I prefer.
1. Mountains and hills first, with some definition on the rocks2. Moving closer forward, completng the distant trees.3. Riverbank, rocks4. Water, more rocks
5. Grasses next to last; signature at the end.
I could have kept going, and still wonder if I ought to add a few closer wildflowers, but I signed it and moved ahead. Chances are I will mix some new greens and brighten the closest grass.
We last saw this one of Blossom Peak and the river looking like this:
The river is rockier and even more confusing in this scene, so the work of simplification is the first challenge.
Sky and Blossom Peak first—that was the easiest part.Not sure what I did next—this one is difficult.
The afternoon light was waning while I sat, stared, and contemplated how best to interpret real life into something paintable and believable.
The light is weird on this, so in better light I will study it some more to figure out how to improve it before signing.
You can see that the colors here look different from the 2 photos above. That’s how it goes when painting with natural light. Lots of people use an “ott light”. I don’t understand the word “ott” and only use mine if I’m on a deadline and have to paint when light is low. My approach is based on the fact that no one who buys my paintings will be displaying them under an ott light. They need to look normal and natural and good in regular light.
So this one will have to just hang loose and be cool for awhile longer. That’s what people used to say before “mellow out”, “chill”, “chill out”, and “chillax” came into use. Now I don’t know what people say other than “it is what it is”, meaning you can’t do diddly squat about it. Wait, does anyone say “diddly squat” anymore?
“Unveiling” is obviously a euphemism here. Murals are highly visible, and no one threw a tarp over the one on the side of the Ivanhoe library. (However, someone did throw an egg on it and tomorrow I will go touch it up. Sigh.)
Not gonna bore you with mundane details of life, just the productive and mildly interesting aspects that often fill a workday for me.
First I met some friends early and we slammed out 4 miles on foot. Sometimes I don’t have anyone to walk with, and so I pick shorter steeper walks. On this particular morning there were 3 friends!
Next, Trail Guy and I decided it was a good day to figure out spacing and irrigation for another planting project at church. I’ve been keeping these shrubs alive for awhile for this purpose. (Vitex—doesn’t that sound like a food supplement? AKA “chaste tree” and we call them “lupine trees”)
When we got home, I called a glass shop to make an appointment to have someone come estimate the replacement of 5 broken window panes. Most came with the property and have been ignorable for many years, but last week I broke the pane over my drawing table. The window was stuck, and when I pushed on the frame from the inside, it warped enough to break the glass. Since this one matters, I figured I might as well get them all repaired.
Next, I finished editing a paper? document? report? for someone who has done a bunch of research, created this 160 page document, and may have slept through high school English classes. He did good research, and It could make a good book in the future.
When that was finished, I submitted the reformatted file of The Crooked Cross of Diamond Lake and then resized the cover to fit the greater number of pages. Why would I do this? Although Louise and I were quite happy with the outer appearance of the book, the interior was substandard. I used a free standard (Wait, didn’t I just call this “substandard”?) template from the book printing company and it was just ugly. So I successfully fought through my 11-year-old template and got it to work. (I’ll let you know when the book is available for purchase and how to get a copy.)
Of course I dress to coordinate with my book covers—don’t you?
When all my productive procrastination wore itself down to nothing left that could pass for work, I went outside to paint. The mosquitoes make it fairly annoying, so I picked a couple of pieces of lemon geranium and rubbed it over exposed skin. I think it actually worked as a mosquito repellant!
The order of business was to finish the last 2 paintings of the Honeymoon Cabin, getting stocked up for the summer selling season at Silver City.
I forgot to take the final photo of the 10×10” square painting.
The next two paintings are to sell here in Three Rivers, probably at Kaweah Arts or Stem & Stone. This one is a bit challenging with many things to simplify, many textures that would be possible if this was a pencil drawing. However, oil paint is a different media. (Thank you, Captain Obvious)
Same here.
When I left the painting workshop, I took two finished paintings into the studio to scan. I am still holding out that I can keep this scanner going for awhile. I really don’t want to spend a ton of time reading about them on the internet, trying to figure out who is a paid reviewer and who is telling the truth, figuring out what extra stuff is necessary to force it to work with Mac, and then having my laptop bite the dust (it is a 2015 model) and then the new scanner won’t work. Sigh.
The first one is as it scanned; the second is repaired with Photoshop Elements to more closely resemble the painting.
Same thing with this one.
And finally, I put the photos from my inferior phone camera on the laptop and wrote this post.
We had a perfectly beautiful spring day in April after March’s unseasonable heat wrecked the green and prematurely caused most wildflowers to croak.
Buckeye trees actually are quite fragrant.
Mariposa lilies aren’t all that common in Three Rivers; we usually see a little different variety of this elegant lily in abundance in Mineral King. Some years I’ve seen a deep red version at Hume Lake.
This is a brodaeia called “pretty face”.
Mustang Clover—often it is white with a faint touch of lavender.
This isn’t a wildflower around here; it is a tamarisk tree, and this is the first time I’ve ever noticed it in bloom.
Since 1994 I have been helping people learn to draw. Some people already have an inkling about drawing but want to increase their skills. Some have always wished they could draw but didn’t know how to start. Some have been told they are terrible at art (such mean fake “teachers” out there in the public schools, back in the olden days) and want to prove otherwise.
A week or two ago I had the privilege of teaching a two hour beginning drawing workshop for 9 people from Exeter’s continuation high school. All of the participants were there by choice, not because it was an “easy” class. Two hours was nowhere near enough time, and I do not understand how a school teacher can manage when each one in the same group progresses at a different pace. We had a good time, and it was very intense compared to regular drawing lessons where I work with about 4 people at a time for an hour, each working on his own piece at his own pace.
Have a look at what my regular students are currently producing.
Helping people draw is a great source of joy and satisfaction in this artist’s life. And every one of these folks ‘bout busts my head open with pride in their accomplishments!
Spring happened early in Three Rivers this year. It also seems to be ending early. It is hard to comprehend that Farewell To Spring began blooming around the lake at the end of March, when normally they don’t appear until the end of April or beginning of May.
You may have noticed that I am a little obsessed with the flowers growing in the wild and the ones blooming in my yard. By the time this post is appearing, all of these will be toast.
On the front porch; I think these are called Queen’s Tears.
Early early early for the climbing roses—normally they appear at the end of April.
A last hurrah for these iris. . . I think I’ll plant even more next fall. (Greedy? yeah, maybe)
In the orange grove of a friend, where we like to glean oranges, particularly when they are in bloom. Citrus is unusual in the plant world in that the blossoms and the fruit can be present at the same time (depending on when the fruit is picked.)
Around the time that the rest of the wildflowers and the green fade, I can always count on finding these penstemon on a regular walk in the neighborhood.
Fading fast. . . sigh.
This one would make a nice painting, and if I substituted poppies for the common madia, it might even sell.
The fiesta flower takes some of the pain out of spring’s end.
Okay, I’m tryna be brave here. ‘Posed to be working. Imma get something done besides obsess about flowers.
Maybe. Maybe I’ll stop speaking slang and straighten up and fly right now that spring’s distraction is ending.
So many parts to my little life: editing, gardening, doing stuff for church. . . but I was ‘posed to be painting.
Look! This crape myrtle tree isn’t dead after all!
Hey! Why are these iris hiding?
This sign will be repurposed, but first Trail Guy had to scrape off old lettering, and then I had to put forty-eleven coats of paint on it. Now we get to store it until the next volunteer does his part.
What? You want another sign? Okay, fast-horse quality
LOOK! The climbing roses are blooming, and they usually don’t appear until the end of April!
Wait! I’m ‘posed to be painting!
Remember this guy? I thought he looked weird. After studying him upside down with the photo, I made a few adjustments, added a bit more detail, signed it and set it aside. This ain’t no piano I’m building here. . . let’s not get paralyzed by perfectionism, because summer’s selling season approaches.
Moving on, there are 3 more Honeymoon Cabin paintings to complete.
That was quick and easy. Next!
Back and forth between the two, tryna be efficient with the colors on the brush so I didn’t waste either paint or time.
Still, I didn’t finish either one of these. Maybe the next time I can get these both finished and move on to some Three Rivers paintings. Shoulda coulda woulda had them done in time for Easter weekend/First Saturday in Three Rivers, but there were so many other distractions. As you witnessed by the beginning of this disjointed post.
