Drawing Mineral King

It is Friday, and the only new thing I have to show you of Mineral King is a drawing. My weekends have been taken with memorial services (one last Saturday and another one tomorrow), drawing workshops, art receptions, business presentations. 

I’m not complaining, just ‘splaining.

The drawing is new. The scene is old, or perhaps “classic” is the right word.

Pencil drawing, “Mineral King From The Bridge”, 9×12″, unframed, unpriced, uncertain.

It has been awhile since I drew anything of Mineral King (except for water). Maybe a series of pencil drawings of Mineral King would sell as reproduction prints. Cards? Too much money to print, too little profit. But I’ll give that some thought too.

Want a laugh? Look at how I drew this scene in 1987.

Growth is good, unless you are a cancer cell. 

 

Sawtooth Oil Paintings

This is the status on the most recent Sawtooth oil paintings.

Sold.

Sold.

Unfinished and unsold. On the left, 8×8″, will be $100. On the right, 6×6″ will be $60. (tax not included, but I will pay the postage.)

Sawtooth is a peak visible from Visalia, the county seat of Tulare County, and it is about 7 miles by foot out of Mineral King. When I was 16, I fell down the thing while climbing it with a group from church camp; we were stupid. (And there are better ways to get helicopter rides.) I went back in my early 20s and hated it. Now I am 57 and I don’t have to climb it if I don’t want to. Instead, I’ll “exploit” it by painting and selling it. (take advantage of it, but not unethically)

It’s Friday, Let’s Talk About Mineral King

Fridays are for Mineral King on my blog, but sometimes every day is for Mineral King. There isn’t a lot happening with my art business right now that you will find interesting (other than the one-day drawing workshop tomorrow at Arts Visalia; call 559-739-0905 to see if any spaces remain).

So, let’s continue our photo excursion in and around Mineral King, while the trails are inaccessible due to swollen streams and deep snow.

One of the things we always do is check the water level at the bridge.

 

I try to stop taking the same photos over and over, but each time I am sure it is the best it has ever looked.

We look at Sawtooth and think about the amount of snow and how quickly it is melting. Neither one of us has any desire to climb it. We were speculating that Monarch Lake may be accessible via the old trail sooner than other lakes, because the old trail is south-facing.

We pay attention to water flowing in places that it normally isn’t. Or perhaps it is, but we are usually out on trails instead of poking around non-trail areas.

We discovered some itty-bitty wildflowers that we’ve never seen before. Too small to see; too small to name. Perhaps Captain Obvious would have named these Blue Dots or Blue Spots.

We have gone to Crystal Creek several times. It was roaring down the trail over Memorial Weekend, so we did some trail rescue. The water level rose again, so we had to do a bit more waterology and redirect the water off the trail again. (Did the same at Chihuahua also, just above the old pack station, which runs colder than Crystal. This is not scientific, just a report from my bare feet.)

I didn’t have to get in the water to fix the flow from Spring Creek down the trail, so I’m not sure of the relative temperature on that one. See? 57 going on 12!

Sometimes trails have obstacles that we can navigate over or around.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade? Or, don’t be sorry for what you have lost; instead, be grateful you had it. Or, be flexible, because it is better to bend than to break. Go with the flow. Bloom where you are planted. Et cetera. . . 

When Mineral King Trails Aren’t Accessible

Happy Birthday, Rachelle! May this be the year of new lungs. . .

What do you do when the trails in Mineral King aren’t accessible?

You walk the trails as far as you can. This was heading to Spring Creek, where the water is still too high for maintenance guys to put the bridge in yet. These folks were exclaiming over the snow and the water; I was mucking about in the water, mud and rocks, diverting water off the trail. (I’m 57, going on 12).

This is Spring Creek, taken from as close as I dared get. This is the same creek in my drawing titled “Hard Water”, but that was from the bridge. I’m sure you must be able to tell it is the same creek. . .

Hard Water, pencil drawing of Spring Creek

We also went looking for things, like Five Spot wildflowers. Trail Guy had noticed large swaths of them from the road by the Tar Gap parking lot, so away we went, off trail, in search of these special little guys.

First, we found Blue Lips.

Blue Lips wildflowers must have been named by Captain Obvious.
See? Blue lips.

Looks like a nothing burger of white dandruff on the ground from here. Or, if you are a Heidi fan, it looks like the Alps.

Captain Obvious, on his wild naming spree, must have been delighted to discover these Five Spots.

Once again, this is getting to be too long. To be continued tomorrow. . .

Remember, there is a one day drawing workshop at Arts Visalia on Saturday. You may contact them at (559)739-0905 to register.

Sights along the Mineral King Road

This is how “the potholes” were running recently. It is wonderful to see all the water!

This is how Sawtooth looked on the way up the hill. (That’s flannel bush in the foreground).

This is an unnamed drainage, coming down from Empire, about 2 miles below the Mineral King Valley. Every possible drainage is flowing.

This is looking back down the road through what remains of the avalanche by the Sawtooth parking lot.

Finally, this is how it looked out the back door of our cabin. The woodpile is accessible, so I was able to swing an axe and even a hatchet. Making kindling isn’t nearly as satisfying as splitting wood for the stove, but sometimes a woman’s gotta do what she’s gotta do.

Samson isn’t dead. He was sleeping in my studio, and I took this photo in case you missed him or wanted to see the spots on his belly.

Wildflowers on Mineral King Road

A few days ago I was in Mineral King and took photos along the road of the abundant wildflowers.

But first, let’s start with my favorite subject to draw and paint, the Oak Grove Bridge.

Look at that water!!!

Wildflowers along the road continue to be prolific. The first photo isn’t technically of wildflowers: these are sweet peas planted by Mary Trauger in the late 1800s.

Blazing Star
I don’t know
I don’t know, even closer
HUGE dandelions
Yellow-throated gilia (pronounced “Jill-ee-uh”)
Ceanothus, wild mountain lilac, or if you were on a road crew with Trail Guy, “ant bush”.
Flannel bush, AKA “Fremontia”
bush poppy
More I don’t knows
Farewell to Spring; some years, you can see them almost all summer as you gain altitude through the season along the road.
Bush monkey flower
Penstemmon, hugely more vibrant in person than in photos

This post is too long. Hope you made it to the end. Tomorrow, Mineral King will be the subject matter again.

Meanwhile, remember there is a one day drawing workshop coming this Saturday in Visalia.

Mineral King Oil Paintings, Finished and Drying

These photos of six little Mineral King paintings represent a day with 3-4 tiny paintbrushes in motion. 6×6″ paintings are canvases that easily fall off the easel, so I hold them in my hand while painting. The detail is as accurate as I am able to achieve without running each painting into an irretrievable number of hours.

Let’s review.

Top photo, left to right: White Chief; Aspens along the Nature Trail

Trail through Atwell Mill Campground, lower end of the campground

Trail leaving Monarch Lake

Sawtooth as seen from the Nature Trail; Sawtooth as seen from the Nature Trail

Each of these paintings will look better when dry and scanned, and even better in person. Each painting is $60 (plus tax if you live in California. I round the number to $65 because simpler is better.)

One of the Sawtooth from the Nature Trail paintings is spoken for. (SD, which one do you prefer??)

The rest will be sold through the Silver City Store, unless you contact me before I take them up the hill.

Mineral King, Summer 2017

The road is open, the trails are snow-covered, the water is flowing. I didn’t take my camera last weekend, just because I wanted to be completely off work. Trail Guy took this photo on the way up about a week ago. The snow is considerably less on Sawtooth by now, but still quite evident.

Little Mineral King Oil Paintings

A week or so ago, I showed you the very rough beginnings of 5 new Mineral King oil paintings. In spite of the scribbly appearance, a faithful blog reader claimed one of them. She knows I can paint, although at this stage there isn’t much visual evidence to back up her confidence in my abilities.

This necessitated a new painting. It is a weird mini factory assembly line situation to paint 2 of the same scene at the same time. Efficient, but like deja vu all over again.

Sawtooth is a popular subject in the Silver City Store (4 miles below Mineral King). It is visible from the seat of Tulare County, Visalia, on the days when we aren’t qualifying for the worst air in the nation. The smog funnels through the Altamont Pass and into the Central Valley, a fluke of geography. Sigh.

But I digress. Here are the other little Mineral King paintings in progress. The first one is aspen trees along the Nature Trail, the lower end of the same trail with the view of Sawtooth.

The one on the upper left is the Monarch/Sawtooth trail, heading back down to Mineral King. Upper right is White Chief (the greenish color in the sky is the result of dropping my palette on it, and it will be repaired in the next layer of paint); bottom painting is the trail leading out of Atwell Mill through the redwood trees.

Atwell Mill is the campground below Silver City in a mostly logged grove of sequoia (AKA redwood) trees. The trail below leads to the East Fork of the Kaweah, one of the best trails in the Mineral King area. 

P.S. In case you think these paintings look as if I can’t paint, please be reassured that each one needs at least one more layer. That layering method is called “glazing” in Artspeak. It is what allows this pencil artist to paint without coming unglued at the inability to erase.