Long Distance Commission, Chapter 3

This project progress took place before I started the mural on the Ivanhoe library.

This might be the first time I have ever put a canvas on the drawing table and measured out exactly where everything is supposed to go.

When I had enough pencil guidelines on the canvas, I took it out to the painting workshop and set it up on the easels with the sketch for reference. The hard work of designing from the stack of photos all taken from different angles in different eras of the house was finished, so I needed to trust the approved sketch.

The first layer needs to be thin, or in ArtSpeak, “Paint lean to fat” (this means that the artist should thin the first layer of paint with turpentine and gradually add more oil— “fat” — with each successive layer. (When I first hear this, I was slightly offended, thinking that it was commentary on my body type. . .)

I worked from back to front, which means sky first, since it is the farthest away.

I didn’t get too concerned with mixing exact colors at this stage. . . “Closies count (except in hand grenades and horseshoes.)”

I tried to stay in the lines. This is a new method of painting for me. I’ve done a few of these architectural type paintings before, but this one feels more important to get exactly right. I wonder if it is the long distance relationship; most likely it is the exactitude with which Mr. J. has described so much about this house.

The sky looks as if there is a flat mountain ridge, but that is because I primed the canvas before I knew exactly how this scene was going to be arranged. The many layers will cover that “ridge”.

I sent this photo to Mr. J. and he was pleased. It needs some drying time before I cover everything again, with paint that isn’t as thin, and paying more attention to the correct colors and details.

Calendars available here, $25, includes shipping

Library Mural, Day Two

Brrr, BRRR, and BRRR! In driving the 35 miles down to the mural yesterday, I learned that the defroster in Momscar* is INSTANTLY effective, and I actually used the seat warmer, which seems like an ultra luxurious feature. Now I just need to figure out which button makes heat land on my feet.

Step by Step on Day Two

I took MomsCar so instead of just working off the tailgate of the good pick-em-up truck, I unloaded everything on the curb. (This is the curb of the driveway, not the actual road.)

Next, I had to satisfy my curiosity about that box on a pole.

No idea.

It is overwhelming to look at all that needs to be done, so I just eased into it. First, I removed the tape on the outside of the left inset.

Then I retaped it on the inside of the inset.

Because I paint from back to front and the sky is mostly finished (might add wispy clouds later), I mixed some “purple mountains majesty” color.

Starting on the left side, working my way south.

I had to keep standing back to see if it was believable. My goal was to make the mountains accurate, but I can’t seem to get a photo of how the range looks from Ivanhoe because of the overcast. My one good photo only goes from Alta Peak north. So, I just painted a first coat on the second half, getting Sawtooth in place. I will finish the mountains after I get some better photos.

Next, the upper edge of leaves. That was confusing because I am interpreting multiple photos, trying to make it believable. I alternated among 3 greens and used a tiny hint of orange. I’m not sure what the best approach is yet, but I have plenty of real estate in which to solve this problem.

I also placed a few of the closer oranges by circling the placement.

I moved to the upper right leaves, and then I was just too cold to continue. Here is the final shot of the day.

Then I filled in the channel left unpainted by the masking tape around the left inset.

The leaves didn’t look right to me, so on the way home I took a few photos.

*Mom gave me her car, and after a few months of adjusting to the fanciness of a 4-door, 6 cylinder, automatic, I still think of it as her car. Thus, the current name of Momscar.

I have some other obligations and work responsibilities so won’t be back on the wall until Friday.

Calendar available here, $25 includes postage (and I’ll eat the sales tax if you are in California.)

Library Mural, Day One

I got to the library at 8:45 to survey the lay of the land. Muddy. Significant log. Big roots to NOT trip over. What’s that weird little box on a pole? Could it be a Little Free Library, right here at the library?

After I unloaded the ladders, I realized that the wall was full of spiderwebs and dust.

When I was almost finished wiping it down, the representative from the Arts Consortium showed up, along with my intern. There was a little bit of paperwork; I gave Intern some jazz about not being able to sign his name in cursive, and Rep had to tell him that his last name initial was needed. (“Kids these days. . . sigh”, thought the old artist.)

Intern was helpful. I was able to teach him a little about starting a mural, using various tools, deciding the order to proceed. He learned about measuring and translating the scale of 1/2” = 1’, along with using a plumb line and a square.

We started with measuring the wall, to be certain that the measurements and proportions matched the approved design. Next, we taped off the insets.

Intern wasn’t dressed for painting, but he was really careful, and we painted the skies.

Intern was a hungry cold boy, so he left for lunch and I began the green base coat.

When he returned after his lunch, we finished the green and I painted some dirt base coat.

What will I do today? I will be on my own, because Intern has end-of-term projects to complete. The library will be open some of the hours that I am working, so I will be able to store my equipment and supplies until Friday. But they don’t open until 10, so I will be starting later on Friday.

The logistics of this job are rather intricate and challenging. I’m not surprised, because it took 3 years from when the county supervisor asked me to paint this mural until I am actually on the job.

2026 Calendars available here

Long Distance Commission, chapter 2

After my conversation with customer Mr. J about all the special things on his former house, I did a new sketch, this time a bit more careful with all the details. Usually a loose sketch works for oil paintings, but this job requires more.

Mr. J requested that I send him the two sketches when the painting is finished. This is something I usually offer to customers, so I said “of course!”. Then I thought he might need to see how they actually look—two 4-1/4 X 5-1/2” sketches on a piece of 8-1/2 X 11” paper from my printer. (We used to call this “typing paper”.)

I worked a bit more on the first one, just so it doesn’t look radically sloppier than the second one.

After that, I took a few photos of it on the table, arranged more neatly than how things actually look while I am working, because although I don’t participate on Facebook or Instagram or any of those things, good effort in photos has always been important to me.

Then, why not just show the long distance Mr. J. a bit more of my studio and view?

Mr. J is very pleasant to work with, and we are enjoying getting to know one another. Fortunately he isn’t in a hurry, because I have the other custom oil painting, a mural to paint, and I had that show last weekend. Plus we had rainy days, which make it a little too dark to see well enough to paint well.

Soon, I will begin the painting. I’m a little nervous, but in a good way, the kind of nervous that makes me ultra careful.

Long Distance Commission

The wonder of the interwebs has brought me a customer that I most likely will never have the pleasure of meeting in person. Let’s call the customer Mr. J. Mr. J and I have gotten acquainted in the comment section of The Frugal Girl blog, and he asked me to paint the home he used to own. “Used to own” means that getting photos is now a bit tricky. New owners almost always make changes, so I am working from several photos, all taken from different viewpoints and at different times in the home’s existence.

Mr. J is a very precise communicator, responsive, specific, and always willing to email, text or talk on the phone.

The project began with an email almost a year ago. We discussed canvas sizes and prices. Mr. J wanted to wait until spring to get photos with certain plants in bloom. Spring came and went with no photos. I’ve learned through the decades that until money exchanges hands, it is simply conversation. I didn’t bug him, knowing that he is a person who will follow through when he is ready.

This past summer, or perhaps early fall, he sent me photos and a deposit check for half down, so we were in business.

Looking through multiple photos taken from different angles, in different seasons, and at different times in the house’s life, I started with a colored pencil sketch, which I scanned and emailed for feedback.

Mr. J sent it back to me in this form: black and white, covered with notes.

I studied it, and realized we needed to have a conversation. We talked quite awhile, and I made lots of notes. The conversation was very helpful in understanding things that made no sense in the multiple photographs.

When I realized the degree of detail that Mr. J wants, I suggested a pencil drawing. He was unsure, because the finished piece will be displayed with other paintings of other buildings. I sent examples of my detailed architectural drawings, and a week or two later, he replied that oil was his preference.

To be continued. . .

New Oil Commission, Chapter 5

Before I finished layering the background things, I blew off any discipline about painting, ignored conventional wisdom about The Way You Are Supposed to Paint, and I launched into detailing.

When I draw, I work from top to bottom, left to right. This way I don’t rest my hand on finished parts, thus not smearing graphite around. So, in spite of generally painting from back to front (the farthest away thing like the sky first, moving forward toward the closest objects), sometimes I resort to drawing with my paintbrush in places where there are enough layers to warrant the detail. This means the left side of the canvas might start looking pretty good while the middle and the right side still resembles a dog’s breakfast.

I couldn’t see very well with the doors open and bright light behind the canvas, so I rotated it. Hence, the colors appear to have changed. (Did anyone notice this?)

Bark on trees, more branches, better grasses, humanoid becoming more human (and now wearing shorts), more leaves, more this, that, and the other thing.

It was a very satisfying afternoon of painting (and only a little mosquito slapping.)

HEY, SEARCH ENGINES, IN CASE YOU ARE LISTENING, THIS IS A PIECE OF CUSTOM ART, AN OIL PAINTING OF A MINERAL KING SCENE. (Just in case there are a handful of folks who wish to join my tens of readers and see how a painting is built by this regional artist, this self-trained, user of a paintbrush like a pencil.)

WHAP, SLAP!! WHY are there mosquitos still plaguing me in November, for Pete’s sake?!

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. . .