Today will be less metaphorical than yesterday’s post. It was a cold and dark day when I painted this, so the photos of paintings aren’t as thorough.
Get to work, Central California artist who is distracted by the beauty of her favorite month. Today’s painting subject is the Honeymoon Cabin in Mineral King, the only cabin left from Disney’s era.
Yesterday we looked at several juniper paintings. I like to paint this subject, because it is fairly forgiving. Who is going to say with confident knowledge, “Hey, you added a branch!”? No one, I hope. It is the overall shape of the tree that people remember, unless they were actually climbing the tree, but most people who climb the trail to White Chief need all their lung power simply for the elevation gain.
I like painting junipers.
There is a juniper tree on the trail to White Chief (Mineral King, of course) that is striking and memorable. Several people have called it their favorite tree, among them Trail Guy.
I painted it twice last summer.
Now I am painting it two more times.
Before I head to the studio, have a look outside.
HEY! CENTRAL CALIFORNIA ARTIST! AREN’T YOU GOING TO DO SOME WORK?
The goal is for this book, Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names, to be ready at the end of April for a book signing at the Three Rivers Historical Museum. I’ll keep you posted.
It might be springlike in Three Rivers in January, but it is winter in Mineral King. Trail Guy made a day trip up there to check out the snow and the cabins. The photos look almost like black and white; I’m into green more than into white so I went walking up Salt Creek that day.
I had a little encouragement and companionship while working on the regreening of the Mineral King mural. It wasn’t the normal type, with questions and requests for business cards.
One of the most difficult parts of painting a mural for me is that the brushes don’t hold their shape. They get clogged up by paint, the ends splay out, and it is just impossible to draw with them or make edges look clean or accurate or anything at all like I want.
Sigh. Best viewed from the back of a fast horse. . .
The primary colors of red, blue, and yellow plus white are how I mix colors to paint murals. The paints are supposed to be highly pigmented and lightfast, but yellow ALWAYS fades first. Since green is made from blue and yellow, greens turn to grayish blues.
Two years ago I repainted the big Mineral King mural in Exeter because of this problem. When I ordered paints for the job, the paint company said of my yellow choice, “We no longer recommend that yellow for outdoor use.” Well, that certainly explains a lot. So now I am refreshing murals a little at a time, as I am able.
This mural was looking very tired to me. The owners weren’t unhappy with it, but it was hurting my eyes and my pride.
Here is a good example of Before and After of the same area.
Tomorrow I’ll show you more of the repainting session. Meanwhile, I have to go scrape dried paint off my knuckles.
In my normally slow month of December, I finally had the chance to work on my upcoming book Mineral King Wildflowers: Common Names.
It seems to be cooking along just fine, and then something goes wackadoodle with InDesign or the template ceases to do its templatish magic or it takes hours and hours to resize all the photos to the same effective PPI (you’d really rather not know) or some of the photos get corrupted and I have to keep moving the flashdrive back and forth between the 2 laptops or I realize the title page simply says “MK Wildflowers” instead of Mineral King Wildflowers . . .
You get the idea.
One morning I worked about 10 minutes on it and suddenly it was lunchtime. Then I put in about another 1/2 hour and it was dark out. Then another 10 minutes and it was 9 p.m. So, you see this is an engrossing and enjoyable project.
The worst part will be writing the blurb on the back. Have you ever tried writing about yourself? Don’t, if you are able to avoid it.
The plan is to have it in hand in April so I can do a book signing in the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum before the Redbud Festival when people are in a wildflower state of mind. (Have you ever been in a wildflower state of mind? It might just be an idiosyncratic trait of this Central California artist.)
On Friday’s post I said that the only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King, by Jane Coughran and me, published by Cabinart Books in 1998, is to get lucky on eBay or on Amazon.
Then I decided to look for myself. Nothing on eBay, and this is what was on Amazon. Whoa. Here is a screen shot of the first listings:
Then I went down to the more expensive books. Check this out:
Now that is what I would call a Peculiar Sight.
I contacted the last 2 sellers on the listing to ask them if they really and truly meant to list the book for that price. I’ll let you know if I hear back. . . (and yes, I signed my name and told them I thought I did a nice job on the illustrations but their prices seemed a bit high.)
P.S.The seller called FastShip replied:
Jana, Thank-you for bringing this to my attention. We have about 70K books.
They went on with a lengthy explanation of how books are priced and how some fall through the cracks, but they didn’t say if they were planning to reprice the book.
One day last week, Trail Guy and I drove up to the Conifer Gate (the upper gate) on the Mineral King Road so he could replace the combination lock that allows cabin folks to access their cabins in the winter. That is the elevation where the black oaks are, and they can be so glowingly gorgeous with sunlight coming through.
But first, we passed the Eden Creek fire, a lightning strike across the canyon. Because the relative humidity (what?) and the moisture content of the plants are up and the some-big-word-I-only-guessed-at-and-then-forgot is down, this isn’t considered to be the big threat that the summer’s Horse Creek lightning strike fire was.
Now for some bright leaves: 
And a little tree lesson (both are little – the tree and the lesson).
