Art from Hume Lake

The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was for my friend’s parents. Her mom commissioned a pencil drawing.

Wait, not true. The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was the boys staff cabin across the street from the girls staff cabin, in 1978. It was a present for my roommate, and I didn’t save a picture of the drawing.

Here is my friend’s cabin the first time I drew it (1995), and again after my friend allowed me to improve it (2017).

A few things have changed over the years, but none significantly alter the look. (Two trees in the foreground are history and now the room is metal.)

My friend’s cousins have become my friends too, and one year we were there for a birthday party for three of the cousins. I did three tiny paintings for birthday gifts.

My friend commissioned me to paint some ornaments for some of her cousins. They look awful here—wet, shiny, perhaps even incomplete.

One of the cousins sent me this photo the next year.

My most recent iteration of Hume Lake is in pencil, used in the 2026 calendar. This is the view from the footbridge over Ten Mile Creek, looking toward the Forest Service beach called Sandy Cove. (It doesn’t show—it’s behind the trees on the right.)

I have so many beautiful photos of the lake. . . I could paint it. Maybe I will someday. I know, “someday is not a day”, and “sometime is not on the schedule.”

Four Reasons that Selling Art Makes Me Happy

  • It gives me confidence to continue.
  • It clears out inventory to make room for new art.
  • It affirms that I am not wasting my life making things that no one needs or wants.
  • It provides an income, because life costs money.

Now let’s look at the pieces that have sold in the last several months, at Kaweah Arts, Stem & Stone, Exeter’s Mural Gallery, the Silver City Store, and through my website and people I know.

Three disclaimers:

  • Had I owned the new scanner when many of these were completed, they would look better here on your screen.
  • All paintings look better in person.
  • You have seen some of these already, since I often show you them in progress.

Thank you for sharing in my happiness, and remember:

USING PENCILS, OIL PAINT, AND MURALS, I MAKE ART YOU CAN UNDERSTAND, OF PLACES AND THINGS YOU LOVE, FOR PRICES THAT WON’T SCARE YOU.

P.S. Excuse me for shouting. Sometimes I get a little over-excited.

Honesty, Diplomacy, and Wisdom

I have a wise friend who is both diplomatic and honest. She told me that a few of my paintings didn’t reflect my usual care, or perhaps she said they weren’t up to my usual standards— “lacking in detail and clarity”. (There were a couple of paragraphs so I’m summarizing here.)

I blamed the old scanner, but then decided to retouch the paintings after studying them in person. I can always add more detail to a painting! The difficulty is in knowing when to stop. Most painters say that they don’t stop soon enough; I say most painters need to keep going.

Sawtooth #68

Here are the old scanner and new scanner versions, both before retouching.

The scan was poor, and the painting could use more detail. Some people paint blurry, but I’m not in that club. Not on purpose, anyway.

Here is the do-over and the scan on the new scanner. Still doesn’t look as good as it does in person. You’ll have to trust me on this.

Maybe it’s more evident if I put old and new side-by-side.

The color and detail still aren’t accurate, but it is better.

Sawtooth #69

It was definitely time to replace the old scanner.

Three progress photos for you.

Let’s do a side-by-side before-and-after of this one. And again, the color isn’t coming through very well, so trust on your part is required here.

Thank you, my honest, diplomatic, and wise friend!

Who Moved Franklin Falls? (in Mineral King)

Walking in Mineral King (Not a hike because we didn’t take packs)

Instead of the now normal down-the-road-and-up-the-Nature-Trail walk, or the wussy turning around at Crystal Creek, we went past Crystal to Franklin Creek.

It was a little bit farther this year. Don’t you just hate that?

Looking back
Looking ahead

The flowers were most totally excellent.

This was interesting to your wildflower obsessed Central Calif. artist: a purple bush lupine adjacent* to a seldom-seen pink bush lupine.

This is angelica, not to be confused with cow parsnip. Angelica has lacy leaves, sort of visible at the bottom of this photo.

Here is Franklin Creek/Franklin Falls. This is the stream that rose too high for my hiking pal K and I to cross last year in August. You can read about it here: An Exciting Mineral King Hike

Crossing Crystal Creek is way more my speed than dealing with the deeper, steeper, and faster Franklin Creek.

Oh man! I forgot again to put that dime in my pocket for understanding sizes of little flowers!

The Indian paintbrush were spectacular, particularly interspersed with the grayish green sage.

An Advertisement Because This is Supposed to be a Business Blog

This painting is sold, but I can paint it again for you.

*”Adjacent” is “everyone’s” new favorite word. Podcasters and bloggers love to attach it to other words, like this: “This blog about art is Mineral King adjacent”.

Walking to Crystal Creek in MIneral King

The Crystal Creek crossing is about 1 mile from the parking lot at the end of the road in Mineral King. It is relatively flat and easy. We don’t even pretend that it is a hike and it barely passes for exercise. But recently I’ve been thinking that as one ages, one’s body produces and contains progressively more discomfort. Since to hike is to be uncomfortable, one becomes less inclined to add to the discomfort by forcing oneself out onto trails of great steepness and altitude gain. (I AM SICK RIGHT NIGH UNTO DEATH OF THIS STUPID PERIPHERAL NEUROPATHY!)

Ahem. Excuse me for shouting. Let’s take a nice little gentle walk to Crystal Creek.

First, we cross the bridge and admire the classic view of Farewell Gap and the Crowley Family cabin.

Then we head up the road on the left side of the creek which leads to the pack station. The road turns into a trail after the pack station, SO DON’T BRING YOUR DOG.

There were a ton of flowers, and I experimented with the iPhone 14 as a camera with mixed results. All but one of these are dandelions, which are a wildflower in MIneral King, but a weed in your yard. The other is one of many unknowns in my personal wildflower index.

The trail passes through the green tunnel.*

Hey, a non-yellow flower! I’ve always thought these are whorled penstemon, but many books are calling them “small flowered penstemon”. I think “whorled” has a specific botanical definition, but I’m ignorant of it.

Here is the wide and shallow Crystal Creek. (That is kind of like Facebook, but it might be much wider and even more shallow.)

The views back down the trail:

Yea! More colors!

This summer is showing promise of being a terrific one for wildflowers. Everything seems to be about 2 weeks earlier than normal.

Tomorrow: The Nature Trail

*Remember this painting? I feel compelled to show you because this blog is supposed to be a business venture. Yes, it is the yellow tunnel here. Thank you, Captain Obvious.

While I am advertising, this painting might still be for sale at the Silver City Store.

Timber Gap with Bigelow Sneezeweed, 8×8”, oil on wrapped canvas, $145

Hey Jeff, Am I Finished With Your Garden Painting?

I don’t think Jeff reads my blog. Marketing and sales people would tell me that I don’t push it hard enough, that I should be linking posts to my Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook accounts. That would be difficult, since I don’t participate in any of those. This may be why I only have tens of readers; the good news is that I know most of you IN REAL LIFE! Thank you for being here.

But I digress.

Jeff’s Garden, a commissioned oil painting, might be finished. After spending the bulk of another workday on the painting, trying to beat a predicted heat wave (the swamp cooler in the painting workshop can only do so much), I sent the last photo to Jeff to ask if it is finished.

If he says yes, then I’ll sign it, paint the edges, let it dry (a quick process in the heat), varnish it, and then begin figuring out the logistics of getting it to him. His zip code appears to be a Northern California town, so it may get shipped. However, I have another trick up my sleeve that might work for delivering it; more will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Here we go with the (hopefully) final in-progress photos. You can see that I began on the poppies, working my way from left to right. Then I added sweet peas to the upper right, and finally, detailed the bench on the left with a hint of a plaque and a branding iron sitting atop.

HE SAID YES, IT IS FINISHED!

Ahem. Excuse me for shouting. The design had me baffled for awhile, and I thought this would be really difficult. So, I stepped out of my mental blocks and chaos and coached myself the way I would do for a drawing student. It worked, and this was really quite enjoyable.

THANK YOU, JEFF THE GARDENER!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GNAT!

This is Fun

I started detailing Jeff’s Garden, the commissioned oil painting, and it is fun!

We left it looking like this:

Then it began evolving. . . (oops, finger partially over the lens in the first photo)

Planting an Oil Garden

What’s an “oil garden”?

Glad you asked!

Remember this colored pencil sketch for a commissioned oil painting of someone’s garden? (Let’s call him Jeff, because that is his name.)

Jeff approved of the design for his painting and chose 12×24” for the canvas size. Having realized the benefits of starting with a sketch on an earlier commissioned oil painting,I began a larger sketch in pencil on the canvas.

Then, with paint thinned not quite to dripping, I started filling in all the white, figuring out shapes and sizes of the various items.

That’ll do. I tried to begin some detailing, but it was too wet.

Thinking back to the last oil commission of the blueberry/avocado farm, I remember being very unsure of my abilities and nervous about a successful outcome. As is always the case, it was needless to fret. The success (happy customer) has given me confidence on this one and I am proceeding with an eagerness to get to the details.

Trail Guy has said to me for years, “Success leads to success”. Mike Rowe quotes Robert Frost thus: “Way leads on to way.”

I say “Let’s git ‘er dun!”

Business in the Mountains

The Silver City Store sold two Mineral King oil paintings on opening weekend; a few days later they sold a sequoia tree painted on a wood panel.

Luckily for a future customer, I had one more ready to go. So, on the way up the hill last week, we stopped by to deliver it. While there, I took a few more interior photos. The store is good to me*, and I happily advertise for them.

This year I have brought a few pencil reproduction prints of appropriate subjects. It’s been awhile since those were on public view.
Sawtooth on the sawblade is not for sale.
I designed this logo several decades ago and they are still using it. One of the original mugs (doesn’t say “Mountain Resort”) is on my drawing table with colored pencils in it.
Terrible light, but I wanted to show you the no-longer-functional gas pump and the snow outside.

There was quite a bit of snow in Mineral King when we arrived. Tomorrow’s post will be about that, accelerated to Thursday, because there are too many photos of Mineral King to just confine the topic to Friday’s post.

*Not the actual store, but you know what I mean.

Oil Painting Commission to Stretch This Artist

CUSTOM ART | COLLAGES

Custom art is an important piece of my art business. There are countless scenes and objects that I’d really enjoy painting or drawing, but in 33 years of earning a living with art, I have come to understand that people want what they want, not necessarily what I want.

Therefore, I make custom art, which is another way of saying that I accept commissions.

An acquaintance (friend of a friend) got in touch via my website to request an oil painting collage of many views of his garden.

I’ve done many pencil collages before, but never one in oil paint. This is going to stretch my design and painting abilities, for certain and for sure.

Here is a look at a pencil collage so you know what is meant by “collage”. It’s not actual cutting and gluing pieces together; instead it is combining multiple pictures into one larger piece.

CUSTOMER PHOTOS

The potential customer sent me these photos (actually more than this) of his garden. Although nothing stands out to me as a focal point, and I have no plan-view to understand how all the pieces work together, I do understand a person’s love of one’s own garden.

For once in my scattered approach to business, I had the presence of mind to ask for a deposit in order to begin the design phase. In custom art, it’s crucially important to communicate clearly with the customer. It takes several hours of emailing, thinking, studying the photos, and yes, even lying awake at night trying to figure it out. (Hmmm, do you get paid to lie awake at night?)

SKETCH | DESIGN

After the deposit check arrived, I procrastinated for half a day, trying to figure out how to begin. No need to show you all the mental wrangling. Instead, have a look at the sketch, which I started in pencil and then colored in with colored pencils. It looks like a scribbly mess, because it kind of is. However, it doesn’t make sense to perfect something when we are tiptoeing into new territory, unsure of the destination.

The actual sketch is 2-1/2 x 5”, a proportion of 1:2. This will translate into a 10 x 20” or 12 x 24” canvas. (Other sizes too, but I have canvases this size here on hand, ready to go.)

It may look like a mess to you, but I can assure you that the potential customer knows what each item is. He gave me a list of the things that matter to him. I hope this captures the feel and that I can execute this in oil paint.

P.S. The customer emailed yesterday to say he is pleased and to paint it 12×24”!