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).
Trail Guy and our friend went to Mineral King one last time. They closed the Honeymoon Cabin, which serves as a museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society, did a few final chores at our cabin, and took a walk. I stayed home and finished a pencil commission, which I cannot show you because the recipient might follow my blog. (Don’t feel sorry for me – I love to draw.)
Our friend loves going to Mineral King. (His wife is waiting for new lungs. . . sigh. . . altitude does not work for her.)
Did you forget that I was showing you the Mineral King oil paintings that sold in Silver City over the summer? Here is the other half:
As before, the sizes shown here are a little whacky in terms of how they are relative to one another. I was shocked by the stellar rise of the Honeymoon Cabin to the top position this year and also shocked by the relative unpopularity of Sawtooth. One, maybe two, are all that sold of that subject, previously #3 in popularity. The second top seller was the view of the Crowley cabin and Farewell Gap as seen from the bridge.
What a year! If the economy keeps clicking along this way, next year I may bring some of my larger pieces. In the past, people admired them, but they didn’t sell and then I didn’t have them when I needed them for other places and events down the hill. But who knows. . .?
P.S. I accept commissions for oil paintings; NOW would be a good time to ask if you’d like something by Christmas.
We usually choose a weekend in the middle of October to close our cabin for the season. The date is not weather based, but instead it is based on what fits our schedule, that of our neighbors, and how badly we just want to put away our duffle bags for the year and STAY HOME.
The weekend of Oct. 12-14 was our last weekend up the hill for the year. The road isn’t closed yet, and there may even still be water in the campgrounds. Silver City’s last day is October 27. The autumn colors were still present during our final stay, and the air was clear and nippy in the shade.
