Lazy Listicle of Distracted Thoughts

  1. The acorns have been raining down from the live oaks in our yard and attracting herds of deer. One morning Trail Guy counted 16 in the driveway. (Deer, not acorns)
  2. This painting needs a title! Any suggestions?
  3. These 2 5×7″ oil paint on panel paintings are drying. There are 3 more, but these are days of distractions,  falling acorns, broken things, a rush pencil commission, RAIN, and yet another odd job.
  4. This big guy was focused on acorns and water. There is a tub on the other side of that rock that the deer come to (and the turkeys and the cats. . . probably some others we don’t know about). Such is life in Three Rivers in rural Tulare County.
  5. My wonderful webdesigner gave up two hours on her day off to begin figuring out what keeps going wrong with my website. This was her only day off in the busiest week she has had since pre-Plague. There are still some mysteries, but it is mostly functional at this time.
  6. Many years ago a former neighbor gave me this juicer. This year it wouldn’t work, AFTER we picked a 5 gallon bucket of pomegranates. Someone told me about a repair shop in Goshen, so I navigated my way to Breck’s in a ferocious rainstorm, and they gave me hope. Now my hope is that it can be repaired quickly, because in spite of not paying for it initially, at $90/hour, I will be paying for it now.
  7. In spite of November being my busiest month, I spent a day on my tookus, watching a live workshop of many demonstrations of art realism. During the boring ones (I KNOW how to draw!), I packaged notecards. During the other sessions, I took notes.
  8. I also took photos. This is how the light looks on one of my studio windows in the afternoon.

P.S. I might have knitted a little bit too. . . it wasn’t Zoom and no one could see.

P.P.S. (that means PS #2) I hit a skunk on my way home the other night. Didn’t know it until I got home. Felt something, but didn’t smell it until the car was in the garage. Well, yippee skippee. A skunk is easier on a car than a deer. 

 

Painting Three Rivers

Did you think I forgot these paintings? Not a chance; I have a little bazaar coming on November 19 in Three Rivers and need some appropriate merchandise (besides just 2023 calendars and cards and coloring books.)

Did I think you forgot them? Not gonna let you forget—don’t worry your pretty little head about that.

One:

(Please, do not sing about this.)

It is now finished, drying, and awaiting a scan so you can see the colors more accurately. The title is Alta Peak/Moro Rock View. (Yes, I know it is brilliant and clever and original.)

Two:

Just a bunch of yellow grass couldn’t possibly take that long, could it?

Yes, it could and it is. It isn’t titled yet. Perhaps “Yellow Grass and Live Oaks” would be appropriately creative and original. . .

Three:

Mixing colors for this one has been fun. My paintings tend to be all greens, grays, and browns, or nothing but orange (poppies and oranges, over and over).

How about calling it “Three Indian Grindholes on the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River in Three Rivers at Sunset”?

Nope. It is only an 8×10″ oil painting, so there isn’t enough room on the back of the canvas to write all that.

Part of the business of art is coming up with good titles. I’ve got some thinking to do.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Laurie!

 

Making Three Improvements

Improvements

I brought home the paintings from Silver City that didn’t sell over the summer. My good friend helped me evaluate them honestly. I need the opinions of honest good friends, regular people rather than Educated Artist Type people, because regular people are my customers.

First:

Remember this?

I redid it like this:

Immediately someone said, “I want that!” However, I know her pretty well, and she is a talker and a dreamer. It ain’t a sale until money exchanges hands, and no money exchanged hands. So, I added a flag.

I’m certain that was the missing element.

Second:

Why didn’t this sweet little 6×6″ of aspens along the Nature Trail sell?

Because it didn’t have wildflowers!! (After this photo, I repaired the big red blob and changed my signature back to white).

Three:

Why do I still have this little painting of alpenglow on Vandever?

Because it wants brighter colors and more detail, of course.

The business of art requires honesty, realistic looks at sales and what customers want.

P.S. They’ll look better when scanned, and even better in real life.

 

Painting As If I Have a Deadline

After finishing three more 5×7″ oranges on easels, they sold within days. The director of the Mural Gallery asked for more, so I set up an assembly line to get the first layer on the panels.

That was sloppy business. I prefer to work with exact, tight, precision, so I moved back into this 8×10″ painting of a typical Three Rivers scene, and got serious about making it as accurate as possible.

Then I got a call from a man for whom I had done an odd job this summer. He has a deer, which has faded from the sun, and wondered if I could freshen it up. He was able to provide a photo of it when it was new, which will help me get this done right. I said yes, and then we had to figure out how in the world I would charge him for this odd job. He told me what he paid for it initially, we figured out how much he was willing to spend, I told him how many hours that would cover, and then we made a plan. I will paint one side only, keeping track of my hours, and if there is enough time and money left in the budget, I’ll paint the backside. If not, I’ll just paint the backside plain brown, no detail. 

The cats aren’t a fan of this guest in their safe room. I expect they will adjust soon.

A Short Painting Session, 3 Photos of 2 Paintings

I was able to slip another hour or two of painting into my other responsibilities.

Using the leftover blue and gray sky colors, I mixed a bit more Distant Mountain Blues and Grays in order to detail the mountains on two paintings. Both of these paintings feature Moro Rock and Alta Peak, standard landmarks seen from many places in Three Rivers.

The colors look a bit off in this photo, so I carried it outside. Then the colors looked very wrong. Nope, this is not being painted for Disneyland’s Small World (and please do NOT start singing.)

This view of Alta Peak and Moro Rock is from Kaweah Lake in early winter. In this scene, the lake is low (and behind the viewer) and there is some snow in the mountains because winter hasn’t begun in earnest.

It appears that winter has begun in earnest early this year!

My colored pencil artist friend from Kansas, Carrie Lewis, requested a guest post for her blog on last Saturday, so I wrote of my experiment using colored pencils in Mineral King, A Plein-Air Experiment.

A Peek at (closed) Mineral King

We took a day trip to Mineral King. Because the road is closed and the gates were locked, it was the perfect time to pull over next to Bird Poop Rock and inspect it. Since last year’s fire, it is very visible, and it is apparent that it is not bird poop, but a large erratic boulder of white rock (quartz? I don’t know) with lots of dirt and soot and who-knows-what staining the white. It is also broken up and has many pieces scattered along the bank. I slammed a small piece to the ground to see if it is white throughout, and sure enough, it is.

We were fairly busy, retrieving paintings from the Silver City Store, photographing a cabin that I will be drawing soon, and didn’t do any hiking*. The colors were faded, we still saw the small plume of smoke across the canyon on the way up (above Lookout Point), and it was in the mid 50s.

Cabin closed. Shutters up. End of season.

BUT THE JUNIPER IN THE PARKING LOT HAS BEEN SPARED!! Only the dead red fir behind it was removed. (It was marked to be removed, and if you scroll down a bit in this post, you can read about it.)

Hiking buddy and I walked down the road a ways from Atwell Mill.

This is a mystery to me. These 2 peaks appear almost touching from Silver City. Someone has called them Hengst Peak; someone else told me they are Mosquito Peak. “They” is actually two separate peaks, and perhaps one is Hengst and the other is Mosquito. Anyone know??

Then the Husbands caught up to us in the big pick-’em-up truck, and we headed back down the hill.

*The 2023 calendar Mineral King HIKES” is now sold out. 

2 Photos of 4 Paintings in Progress

November is my busiest month, workwise. Commissions, selling the 2023 calendar, the Holiday Bazaar, supplying the places that sell my work, planning for some (maybe) murals, working with an author as we close in on a 5-year project* together (he is writing, I’m editing)  . . . 

So, I paint when I can fit it in, mostly in 1-3 hour sessions. 

It is necessary to be efficient in these sessions, so I do things like mix up some sky colors and then do just the skies on all four paintings of Three Rivers scenery.


But then I couldn’t stop listening to a certain song, so I kept hitting repeat and painted some mountains. It was a logical next step because I was able to mix those sky colors into Distant Mountain Blue (but not too distant).

I’d like to put a lot more detail into these mountains, and probably want to put as much detail as possible in the entire  picture. But for now, it is time to stop playing the song over and over and over. . . .

*The project began when the writer asked me for some illustrations in September 2017.  Here are three posts about those illustrations. One, Two, Three.

Whatcha doing, Central California Artist?

Messy beginnings

All my paintings begin this way. It no longer causes me distress, that continual uncertainty about my skills. With approximately 1300 paintings (not counting murals) completed since 2006 and most of those sold, I am learning to just flow with the mess. 

Planning

With the Holiday Bazaar happening soon (Saturday, November 19, Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building, 9-4), I needed to take inventory and plan. I counted up the number of available paintings by subject, tallied them by size, and came up with a plan. 

Three Rivers subjects are in the shortest supply. 8×10 and similar sizes are the most likely to sell at a one day bazaar here in town. So, two 8×10″s, one 8×8″, and a 6×18″. (Priced at $125, $100, and $165)

Chop chop and hubba hubba

I went quickly through my photos, going on “gut instinct” rather than evaluating to the same degree that I evaluated sizes and subjects, and without hesitating, assigned inventory numbers and titles, wired the backs for hanging, and started painting.

Cover that canvas

Take a break for drying

These will turn out just fine. Most paintings do. If not, I will just add more layers or turn them into Sequoia tree oil paintings. It’s just the business of art.

Round-up of Randoms

This post is a round-up of random thoughts that I’ve been gathering, thoughts that don’t fit any category, sprinkled with irrelevant and random photos.

  1. The last time Michael and I drove up the Mineral King Road together, a car with two young women caught up to us. Michael pulled into the next turnout, rolling slowly as he does, wishing the driver would get on it so he didn’t have to stop. Instead, the car stopped, the window went down, and the driver said, “You two are so adorable!” Excuse me? “Adorable” is what young people say to old people! I wasn’t even knitting at the time. (At least she didn’t say “adorbs”, a word that affects me like nails on a chalkboard.)
  2. The largest Catholic church in all of North America has been under construction in Visalia for two years. Visalia?? Central California, huge number of Catholic families, not a lot of priests available for multiple congregations (or however they refer to their separate churches).
  3. The bears are very active in Three Rivers this year, but not as many as in 2015 during and after the Rough Fire.
  4. Three Rivers population has dropped from 2200 to 1800, and there are only 80 children enrolled in the school. Seems like a good place to enroll your children if you want the teacher:student ratio of private school without the expense. WAIT! One week later, the population part of the sign was missing. What is happening??
  5. An old customer/friend called with an art emergency. This means that she needs some custom art and needs it fast. My prices haven’t changed in many years, but the smallest size I draw is now 9×12″ instead of 8×10″, and I tacked on a rush charge. I was a little embarrassed to tell her the price, feeling as if I was gouging her (but come on!), and her response was: “You don’t charge enough”. Oooph. Just oooph.
  6. I bid on a large mural project, and the waiting to hear if my design and prices were accepted, not knowing the competition, not knowing if it is even feasible to the (potential) customer is Not Fun. This is where faith comes in: “Okay, God, I trust you and your plan for me”. (If I say it enough, maybe eventually I will just relax about the uncertainty).

7 Things Learned in October

These month-end learned posts are for people with curious minds, but not necessarily short attention spans. Welcome to my world. 

  1. Do you live in “a bubble“? A friend (Joy Cromwell) had something about this on her website. I took the PBS quiz and scored 44. This means I am very insulated from mainstream American culture. Wish the score was even lower.
  2. Knapheide is a word and a brand completely foreign to me. I saw this on the back of a utility truck.When I looked it up, this is what I learned: “Knapheide is North America’s most popular manufacturer of work truck bodies and truck beds”. They started out building wagons in 1848! Their mailing address is a P.O. Box in Quincy, Illinois. This is a town along the Mississippi River where a lifelong friend of mine lives. How did I never hear about this company??
  3. Some friends told us they are having solar panels installed for their home electricity. This led to quite a discussion where we all confirmed that we are probably too old to recoup the costs of the panels and installation in SCE savings. However, they are tired of trying to conserve, getting hammered by large bills anyway, and being uncomfortable in the summers. Our conclusion is that solar is a luxury item that is being misrepresented in advertising, not only as a way to save money, but as a way to “save the environment”. Those panels take an enormous amount of resources to build, and that is not necessarily “environmentally friendly”. (Truth is very hard to come by, but I do my best for you here.)
  4. Feijoa is a green fruit that I found at a farmers market in Morro Bay.  After peeling and slicing one, I tasted it. It ended up in my compost bucket because it is just weird. I read about it here (#25) and contrary to the seller at the market, this article says it isn’t usually eaten raw. I can’t remember how to pronounce it, but it doesn’t matter since I won’t be buying it again. It is also called “pineapple guava”, which I think might be a plant in my yard. Wait, that might be “strawberry guava”. Doesn’t matter, because my shrubs don’t make fruits, and if they did, the deer would eat them.
  5. A “malthusian” is a person who believes there are too many people in the world. (Is there a word for people who think there are too many people in California? in cities? visiting Three Rivers on a weekend?)
  6. This is something I knew but hadn’t followed through: I don’t like social media. It is a grind to stay current, and very little (if any) business or true friendships result. A. LinkedIn is helpful if a stranger contacts you about business and you need a clue before returning a phone call. B. Facebook is a sewer and Twitter is for birdbrains. C. I have neither posted nor looked at Instagram for several (6?) months, so I deleted it from my phone. So there.
  7. When asked which brand of colored pencils is the best, I usually say that Polychromos are the best quality, Prismacolor have the best colors, and never waste your money on Crayola. I think they don’t have enough pigment; besides, art supplies easily found at a grocery store probably aren’t professional quality. Here is a helpful comparison of Crayola and Prismacolor.

And thus we conclude another month-end Learned List, in which your Central California takes you down various side roads of often irrelevant and vaguely amusing topics.

(This is Charles-Eugene, a cat I have not met yet.) Clearly, he didn’t find this list vaguely amusing.