Lisa’s Lake House, a Commissioned Oil Painting

Lisa’s family has a lake house in Minnesota, somewhere northern and treed and lakey and gorgeous. She asked me to paint it.

After briefly considering a request to be flown there to see it with my own eyes, I came to my senses and said “Yes, of course I can work from your photos.”

(I have yet to find a customer who will fly me to her lake house in Michigan or Minnesota, family estate in South Africa or Brazil, beach house on Cape Cod or the Outer Banks, log home in Montana or Colorado, et cetera. What am I doing wrong here??)

Lisa wrote me some very thorough notes. We emailed often when she was at the lake house. She took photos. We spoke on the phone. We wrote a few more emails.

Then, I did a sketch for her.

We emailed a bit more. She mailed some more photos. I took copious notes.

Then, I primed a canvas in the orange that was already on my palette. Orange is in the middle of the dark to light spectrum, so it is rumored to be a good priming color.

I emailed her a photo similar to this and warned her not to be scared by the sloppiness. I’ve heard that watching a painting happen is similar to watching sausage being made. Couldn’t prove it by me; however, I do know that my paintings begin their lives looking a little loosey-goosey, sloppy-woppy, ugly-bugly.

Put on your rose-colored glasses, willya for Pete’s Sake?

(Who is Pete?)

Responding to the Voices in My Head

That’s a scary title, is it not?

“Sisters” took a long time to paint. The customer hired me because she liked my precision, and she gave me all the time necessary to complete this to both of our satisfaction.

When I paint, I listen to lots of things. There is music, podcasts, talk radio, books on tape, and voices in my head, including my own.

An aside: Someone said we should talk to ourselves the way we talk to our best friends. You know how sometimes you say things to yourself like, “How could you be so dumb?” (Maybe you don’t – please just play along for a moment. . .) If your best friend did something dumb, you’d be more likely to say, “That’s okay – stuff happens and we can learn from it.” Or, “Don’t worry about it – it is a small thing that can be fixed.”

This is what I have chosen to believe and follow:

  1. I am a studio painter who works from photos.
  2. Good paintings take a long time to finish.
  3. Precision and accuracy are attractive.
  4. I love detail.

Here are what the voices in my head have been saying, and here are my new responses in light of my recent decision (see the September 12 post):

VOICE #1 – “You are drawing with your paintbrush”.

Me – “So what?”

VOICE #2 – “If you paint standing up, you’ll paint with more energy.”

Me – “If my foot hurts, I will paint with more pain.”

VOICE #3 – “You need to listen to cool music while you paint, jazz or classical”.

Me – “This is a great time to listen to talk radio, podcasts about the business of art, interviews with artists and authors and inspirational speakers, sermons I’ve missed from my pastor, and audible books.”

VOICE#4 – “Real artists don’t paint from photos.”

Me – “Okay, I’ll be a fake artist.”

VOICE #5 – “You need to step back from your painting to see how it reads from a distance.”

My – “Thanks for the reminder. I am so into the detail that I forgot!”

Loves Cotton, Loves To Knit, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×8″, $100

 

What Is The California Artist Doing?

Perhaps you’ve been wondering if I am still a California artist. Cruising to Alaska, having fun in Mineral King; is this chick even working any more??

I am working diligently on The Cabins of Wilsonia. You can follow the progress on my other blog, called The Cabins of Wilsonia. (Sometimes my own cleverness just slays me.) Actually, you can follow my thoughts about the process, because I’m not showing everything I’ve finished. Gotta have a little mystery, so people will want to buy the book!

My drawing quota for August has been met, and now it is time to work on some commissions.

I have 2 cabins in Wilsonia to draw that are outside the scope of the book. This is good, because income is good. This is not good, because doggonit, I will have 230+ cabin drawings and now I’m adding to the + side of things!

Nope. not complaining. It is tricky to choose the exact cabins and views that will please the cabin folks and also keep the book from looking all samey-samey on every page.

The entry-way door of this cabin is interesting to me.

Wilsonia cabin door pencil drawing

It is also interesting to the people who own the cabin, but they are more interested in seeing the cabin in its entirety. So, I’ve done a couple of sketches so they can choose. The differences between the two choices are subtle – can you spot them?

sketches for a pencil drawing commission of a cabin

The California Artist Finds Her Big Girl Pants

I got serious about working on this commissioned oil painting of the Kaweah Post Office in Three Rivers for a nice (and hopefully patient) lady from New Jersey.

Kaweah Post Office oil painting in progress

Now, this is more like it. layers, details, contrast, texture. It needs to dry so I can paint the words on the signs – KAWEAH, POST OFFICE. The year established and the zip code are too small. The other words are sort of too small too, but I’ve done it before and I can do it again. I’ll probably end up tightening up other parts of the painting too. That’s usually how it goes.

So, I’ll just lift it off the easel, paint the edges, hang it up by the window, and then wipe the paint off my forearms. I always get paint on my forearms when I paint the edges of the canvas.

Kaweah Post Office oil painting hanging upside down by the windows

OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Would you just look at that!?!!

The wire is on the wrong side. The title on the back will be upside down too. I’ve only done this about 800 times so far.

I might need some time off soon.

Kaweah Post Office and Big Girl Pants

Dabbling, thinking it might be good to finish this before it gets hot again when I’d rather be in the drawing studio with its A/C unit instead of in the painting studio with its swamp cooler. Dabbling, deciding, doodling. . .

Has anything even changed from yesterday?

Get going – drink some coffee or eat some chocolate!

Here’s the problem: I’ve been concentrating so hard and long on the upcoming book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, just drawing like a pencil machine, that I’ve gotten nervous about my painting abilities.

This is a commission, I’ve been paid, and the customer is waiting. Put on your big girl pants and get busy.

Wow. That created a sense of urgency. Stay tuned. . . more will be revealed.

 

More about lavender

My amazing friend Barbara grows lavender. She opens her lavender gardens (or is it a farm?) to the public each June when the lavender is at its peak. People can harvest bunches of lavender.

English lavender in bloom

The dates of this event are a little squishy, because the bloom is dependent on the weather.

This year, it is possibly Saturday June 15. This happens here in Three Rivers, and you just sort of have to pay attention to the paper and to people who might know.

Barbara and I like to collaborate on art projects. She had me paint lavenders on saltillo tiles for her garden and to sell during the Hidden Gardens Tour. These sold well, so I have painted more for her Lavender Harvest Event.

In addition, I have finished 2 new paintings based on her beautiful lavender. The hope was to have them printed into blank books to be useful as journals. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Livingston Lavender, oil painting, 8×10″, private collection

I know I said 2 paintings. Guess you’ll have to come back tomorrow.

My Amazing Friends, Chapter Four

Tomorrow is the Three Rivers Hidden Gardens Tour. I think you can still get tickets here.

My favorite spot on the tour is my amazing friend Barbara’s lavender garden. (Your favorite might be Anjelica Huston’s place, which I’ve only seen from the road or in Architectural Digest a few years ago.)

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Barbara and I have been having great fun putting together some stepping stone/plant identifiers. Her daughter painted a couple of saltillo tiles with lavender for her a few years ago. Barbara loved them, and decided she wanted more. Her daughter now lives far far away, so she commissioned me to do these tiles.

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I think it may fall into the category of Odd Jobs.

But, this post is about my amazing friends, and Barbara is truly amazing her knowledge of plants, her ability to work tirelessly in her gardens, and her appreciation for beauty.

When people talk about lavender, they sometimes mention English, French and Spanish. If they are like me, they most likely don’t realize there are many many version under each of those categories.

This is Spanish. The flower tips look like butterflies.

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French lavender has leaves that are sort of toothy and serrated. I didn’t paint anything that detailed on the tiles.

 

I painted 24 tiles with different names, and another 11 with pictures and no names. They are all for sale for a price not determined at the time of this writing, and a percentage of the sales benefits the Three Rivers Union School Foundation. (Sorry, we don’t ship tiles!)

 

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An Odd Job

As a California artist based in rural Tulare County, I am willing to do odd jobs. Odd art jobs, that is. (Please don’t call me to wash your windows – they will probably turn out odd.) Staying in the business of art in a place like this means saying, “Yes” when  asked to do odd jobs.

I’ve shown you some of the unusual things I’ve been asked to do in the past. Here are a few links if you want to see some of these items (each will open in a separate tab or window): cabin sign (gotta scroll down the post to see it), chair back slat, ornament (you can read the entire story and see all the photos in December 2011), antique window, pet sign, boat sign, quilt square. There are more, but I fear I will test your patience and you will say TLDR*.

My latest job could sort of be considered a mural, sort of a commission: a faded decal on a recreational vehicle at a mobile home park in Hanford, California.

It was a challenging and fun job. (I consider a job fun when the conditions are good and the job turns out well.)

The most fun part was mixing the colors to match the non-faded sides of the RV.

This side wasn’t faded as badly but the owner requested a touch-up here too.

*Too long, didn’t read

Decisions, Decisions

The commissioned pencil drawing presented several challenges. When a place is really beautiful, visually captivating, unusually interesting, my oh my it is difficult to choose the right view!

I didn’t intend to draw this view but thought it made a nice photo.

The door by which one enters a building is considered the “face” and is usually the most welcoming view.

Since it is actually the office of a ranching business, showing the tank with the name was a good commercial idea.

This used to be the front door. It faced the afternoon sun, and with the stone steps and the view beyond, I was a goner. But I knew it wasn’t even worth showing to the customer because this sort of view is not why people commission me to draw their houses and offices and cabins and ranch offices.

This is the view which attracted my attention to this beautiful house way back when. . . with the orange trees recently topped, the house really shows up well. Unfortunately, topped trees look sort of like a weird lumpy lawn.

Come back tomorrow to see which view the customer chose!