New Oil Commission, Chapter 4

About the mural

The threat of rain prevented me from beginning on Friday. More relevant:the powers that be did not offer me a key to their building, which means I can only paint on Fridays. This coming Friday I will be setting up for the Holiday Bazaar, and the following Friday is part of Thanksgiving weekend, with no idea if the library will be open. So, why start and then wait 4 weeks before continuing??

Commissioned Mineral King Oil Painting

This custom piece of art, a commissioned oil painting of a Mineral King scene for a customer we will call Mister while not assigning any pronouns in order to protect anonymity, is starting to come together enough that I am no longer questioning the wisdom of accepting the job.

You can see the difference in color below because the sun was behind the hill. The inferior camera phone makes adjustments for low light, while changing the color. I sat down to work on the foreground, to get the darks and lights in the right places, hoping the colors were good (are shadows blue? purple? or just darker dirt and darker grass colors?). Tricky stuff to paint in low light.

I got tired of slapping mosquitos so I stopped after here. (Stopped painting, in hopes that I could stop slapping.)

I am still somewhat apprehensive about my ability to create a humanoid which is not only believable, but recognizable.

But it is too soon to worry about this. Actually, why worry at all? Instead, I’ll continue to paint.

I considered making a list of everything remaining, but it is too soon for that too.

A New Mural

Three years ago, the county allowed elected supervisors to have a bit of free rein on things like murals in their districts. My supervisor asked me to paint a mural on the Ivanhoe library, the beloved library of my youth. You can read about it here, here, here, and here.

If you don’t want to go back and read those posts from 2 years ago, here is the short version. The county reined in the Wild West approach, a committee was formed, and a call to artists went out to submit designs and compete for MY MURAL!

Eventually I got chosen, but they forgot to find the money first. Another 2 years passed, until this summer I was given permission to begin. First I needed to wait for the heat to abate and then for my unbloggable situation to resolve.

Meanwhile, the committee gathered money, and decided to only have one mural on the West wall, probably because they didn’t have enough money to pay for two murals because the original payment offered wasn’t high enough to entice many muralists (only guessing this from a few conversations I had with some muralist colleagues).

They requested that I make a change on the orange packing label from “Venice Cove” to “Venice Hill”. I was willing to do this, but only with permission from Klink, the packing house. What a surprise—it has merged with 2 or 3 other packing houses and is now called California Citrus or something similar. Not “Klink” anymore?? This hurts my little Ivanhoe heart, but I’ll soldier on.

Today I thought I would be working on the mural. However, there is now red tape and bureaucracy to navigate, with many opinions, an anonymous committee, and a college student who wants to intern with me. My hope is to be given access to the building on days when the library is closed. Otherwise, I will only be painting on Fridays, and this could take a very long time to complete.

I am REALLY REALLY REALLY looking forward to finally painting this mural!

Meanwhile, I continue to work on a couple of commissions, one of which I have been showing to you and one which is still in the design and decision phase.

(And I’ve actually begun working on the 2027 calendar. The 2026 is available here or anywhere you run into me if I remembered to put some in Mom’s Car* or whichever pick-‘em-up I happen to be driving.)

*It is a really nice car, and I really miss Fernando. Really. Sigh.

New Oil Commission, Chapter 3

On Monday, you saw this version of the custom oil painting of a Mineral King scene.

Next, I put more paint on the sky and worked more carefully on West Florence. (The humanoid is still a mess.)

Time to rescue the humanoid from embarrassing me. Wait, time to rescue me from the embarrassment of the humanoid. Something. . .

What’s different here? A little more background spots, using dark green and the grayish blue/bluish gray of West Florence.

Let’s make like a tree and leaf.

More color and texture on the tree trunks.

Something… Oh. I moved the tree on the left closer to the viewer.

In spite of using Trail Guy as a human-size model in the scene, I’ve decided to make the human larger in the painting.

Many more leaves, branches, trunks, grasses, and trail work to go before getting into the nitty-gritty of putting the correct human in the painting. That is going to stretch my skill to the nth degree.

New Oil Commission, Chapter 2

Here is my usual collection of thoughts about custom art: This is too hard, I’m a washed-up has-been, why does anyone think I am qualified? And: These people are counting on me and I’d better get started because it is going to be hard and take a very long time. Finally: Just paint, you Goober! You know how to do this!

This is what you saw at the end of Monday’s post:

I started with sky because it is the farthest away, then put another layer on West Florence.

Sometimes I turn the canvas sideways because I can better control the brush and see it better for certain areas.

Here I started putting more paint on the trees. I’m also just planting them where they look right to me. The actual tunnel is kind of a mess, hard to find individual trees. If I painted more loosely, I could just slap on spots of various shades of green and then put in hints of blue sky beyond along with hints of tree trunks. But then I wouldn’t have gotten this job, because Mister likes my style of painting, not that loosey-goosey style.

This must have something changed for me to have taken another photo. Oh, I see that I tried to take some of the ridiculousness away from the humanoid-like figure.

More tomorrow. . .

New Oil Painting Commission

“Commission” means someone is paying me to paint custom art for him. Them. Her. Shhhh, I think it will be a Christmas present.

Let’s call the customer Mister. You can decide if it is a man, a woman, or several humans. Mister decided on 20×20”, a square format. The canvas arrived, and I put a very thin coat of paint on it.

This is the version of the requested scene. Yes, it is Mineral King, and that is Trail Guy for size reference.

No wonder my laptop gets splatters on the screen.

Here is the beginning. The photo says “Yellow Tunnel” but Mister is requesting the tunnel to be green.

That’s as far as I got. When it dries, I’ll put in a better sky and a better West Florence (that’s the peak on the left side of Farewell Gap.)

In case you are curious, I painted the tunnel in the green season several years ago. (If it feels like three years, it was probably six.)

Heh-heh, it was actually just five years ago. I think I paint better now. Sure hope so, otherwise I am One Stuck Central California artist. Gotta keep improving. . . always. And don’t give me this “your own worst critic” stuff either, because if I’m not, how will I get better?

And that’s all I’ve got to say about that. For now.

P.S. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURIE!

Want to learn to draw?

Check out work by two of my drawing students. The first one is finished, and the second one is in progress.

I teach people how to put on paper exactly what they see. It is the beginning of all art, in my opinion. (If a person can only see it in his mind, I cannot help with that.)

Lessons are $60/month, one hour per week with other people, all of whom are learning too, all at different levels of skill. I don’t know where you’ll ever find a better group of people to spend an hour with each week—the friendships grow, the encouragement flows, and we laugh a lot too.

We don’t draw together in December, July, or August. You are welcome to stop by and see what it is like!

Tuesday afternoons, 2-5:30, CACHE, 125 South B Street, Exeter

Tackling an Unfinished Project

Trail Guy nailed some boards together for me several years ago, and I painted redwood trees on them. We got on a roll, and he pounded a few more of these panels together, but sales slowed and I moved on. We were cleaning out an area in the workshop and 2 of these appeared. I delivered one to Stem & Stone, where it adds attention-getting eye-appeal to the store front.

Screenshot stolen from Stem & Stone’s Instagram

The other needed some reworking. It was made from fence pickets. I painted a single tree in the middle, and it looked as if someone with a vee-shaped mouth took a bite from the top. Alas, I took no photos of the previous awkwardness.

Feel like watching paint dry? Here you go:

Greatly improved.

P.S. It’s not a mural, but I did use mural paints instead of oils.

Drawing with Pencils

I guess you could draw with chalk or a paintbrush or your finger on a fogged up window, but drawing with pencils is what I do.

Student work

It’s also what I teach. A returning drawing student had one month free for lessons before embarking on a new chapter of life. We dove right in, and she stayed for several hours each time rather than the normal one hour weekly lesson. The final one took place in my studio, which is where we started about 12 years ago when she was a wee fourth grader. I made an exception to my usual 6th grade minimum age requirement because she was an exceptional child and private lessons meant much more help and attention.

Here’s a drawing she did in about 5th grade.

Here is the drawing she just completed.

She has become an exceptional adult. To quote another one of my drawing students who has known her through the years, “She’s all that AND a bag of chips!”

Protecting identity, because this IS the World Wide Web.

Central Calif. Artist Work

This is a commissioned pencil drawing I finished in July. I haven’t posted it because I didn’t know if the intended recipient reads my blog. (If you recognize yourself, please pretend to be surprised when you receive the drawing!)

Cats in the house

HEY! WHY DO YOU THINK YOU CAN WEASEL YOUR WAY INTO OUR HOUSE??

Sold in Summer—Pencil Drawings

Five of these pencil drawings sold at my solo show in Tulare, “Around Here (and Sometimes a Little Farther)”. The others were pencil commissions, which I showed you with all the slow developments in painstaking detail.

I almost didn’t include this one in the show because I forgot. I may have forgotten subconsciously on purpose, due to my inordinate love of ocean scenes.
I drew this one specifically for the show, and although sales are thrilling, I was sort of hoping to keep it. (What kind of a business person am I with this attitude?)
This is too big for my scanner, so the photograph isn’t the quality of those shown above. HOWEVER, the drawing was quite excellent, if I do say so myself, which I just did say.
Same disclaimer on quality as above.

I love pencil. Did you know that?

Thus we conclude another post about the business of art, because. . .

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.

Procrastination and Completion

The plan was to finish the 10×30” commissioned oil painting of the two redwood trees. When I set up in the painting workshop, it looked too hard and too big and too daunting. So I indulged in some productive procrastination, opting instead to finish the plein air painting of the pumpkin field.

This meant that I added a few blossoms, detailed some foreground leaves, and signed the painting. Since it is too wet to scan, here is the photograph, which include shiny spots.

No, no, no, REALLY, it looks so much better in person! And it might be a bad idea to title it “Pumpkin Patch” since no pumpkins are visible. Besides, Mrs. Texas and I thought it was a field of summer squash for a few months.

Never mind. Let’s return to our twin redwoods, Sequoia Sisters, Sequoia Siblings, Aunt Tillie & Uncle Pete, Two Sisters. The last title is the real one, because my boss chose it. Who is my boss? Mrs. Customer, of course!

The upper mid section of greenery and trunk was lacking in detail. Mrs. Customer also requested to see some flowing water into the trough, along with a few wildflowers.

The water really flummoxed me because it flows in a little ravine, not right at the surface where it is visible. So, on the way up the hill recently, the idea of a waterfall came to me. On the way down the hill, we did a drive-by shooting of the waterfall. I’ve circled it and messed with the contrast so you can get an idea of what I am working with.

First, I had to paint out the fake-looking stream that I put down in order to force myself to address the issue. Buh-bye, little fake stream. You can see that there are boulders indicating a stream flowing into the trough. However, there isn’t room for a believable waterfall.

Oops, too small to see. Here is a close-up of the bottom left corner.

Allrighty then, let the water fall, and let the lupine bloom!

Will Mrs. Customer approve? (I signed it anyway. . . always hoping for the best.)

Why two photos of the (hopefully) finished commissioned oil painting? Because I photographed one with my inferior phone camera and one with my little Canon Elph, which probably is also inferior compared to most people’s phones. This will be an enormous challenge to photograph. When it is dry, I’ll tackle that aspect of the job. Or, more accurately, after Mrs. Customer is pleased and it is dry, then I will take on that challenge.

P.S. I like this painting a lot. Thank you, Mrs. Customer for commissioning a subject that I’ve never done for some odd reason!