I have oil paintings at every stage right now. All depict Tulare County places, because that is where your Central California artist resides. She is a Tulare County artist, perhaps more accurately known as a “regionalist from Quaintsville”.
Finished, scanned, ready to show and sell:
Finished, changed my mind, made it better, now drying again:
Hard to compare fairly when the coloring is so different.
Barely begun:
Sold:
Newly painted to replace the sold poppies:
What makes a good painting day? So glad you asked. It is a day where I make visible progress on paintings, the kind of progress that makes me like the pieces I am working on, and the kind of progress that brings me closer to putting the paintings on the DONE list of Tulare County’s prettiest places.
I didn’t photograph this one after putting on the final touches, so I’ll just tell you that I fixed the branch in the center that is too light and too straight. I also added a few branches hanging down in front of the main tree with leaves and a hint of olives. Then, I signed it!
The road is dirt now. Yeah, yeah, I know that Dry Creek Road is paved, has a center line, and feels like a freeway compared to the Mineral King Road. But this is my painting. So, moo. I also tightened a few details on the barn.
This one needs to dry so that I can add wildflowers. Looks as if that leaning tree on the left could use a bit of straightening. It didn’t look weird in the photo, but it isn’t translating well here. When the flowers are in the painting, I will do a post showing you all the photos that I used to make this scene, which is the best representation of my memory of walking this trail on a very early morning last spring. The photos just don’t tell the story.
This painting is another compilation, or perhaps amalgamation is a better word, of many photos. I know how it looks in person, the camera doesn’t tell the story, and so I mess with the photos on Photoshop to see if I can make the different elements work together. Then I use that to create the scene I remember.
This was so fun. It felt as if I was painting for an hour or so, and suddenly, the day was over!
Let’s start with the signature. This indicates that I am finished with a painting, although I can be convinced to return to it later if something needs fixing up, something that I didn’t notice earlier.
Now, to the new paintings. As normal, I studied my photos, messed with a few on Photoshop Jr. in order to blend several images of the same scene into a more perfect version (if one ignores all the sloppy photoshop seams), looked at the available canvases and chose sizes.
The first one is a 10×10 scene of a trail, not a road. I’m tired of struggling with roads. At the time of these four new starts, I have 2 paintings with unsatisfactory roads holding up the completion. Roadwork is often an obstacle to progress, don’t you think?
This might be easy for a few folks to recognize, although I’ve never painted this view before. Getting the shapes right was tricky, because I blended several photos together, so after messing with the shapes for awhile, I realized that the sky would be an easy step forward.
I’ve never painted this scene before either, and yet I am boldly marching forth on a 16×20 canvas, which is quite huge for me. It will have a stormy sky, in case you are wondering why it is grayish.
Finally, here is one that is probably going to be the most difficult. The size is 10×20″, and once again, it is a scene I haven’t attempted before. I drew the general shapes first. It felt too hard, with many of the shapes fuzzy in the distance, morphing into the next shapes, looking enough alike to confound me each time I looked at the photo.
Baby steps. Just get some color down, Central California Artist—it ain’t rocket surgery!
Sky. I can paint sky without too many worries.
Some days painting feels very difficult. If my feet didn’t already hurt, I might be tempted to go find a job as a waitress, a cafeteria worker, or maybe as a checker in a grocery store. HOWEVER, I feel a calling, a responsibility, almost a sense of urgency to paint the prettiest places in Tulare County before I am too old or they are all gone.
LOOK AT MY YARD RIGHT NOW!! (Those are flowering quince.)
This day’s oil painting session went from an olive grove to a walnut grove. (Grove or orchard? Same thing.) The day ended with a potential cattle ranch.
The last olive grove painting session left me with this mess to tackle, layer by layer.
I began with improving the trunks and branches. Here you can see one of the main reference photos.
Next I put in leafy texture.
The front gnarly trunk needed detailing, and now it needs to dry. After it dries, I will fix anything that is looking wrong, and then, if the paint is flowing well, if the force is with my brushes, and if I become one with the canvas, I hope to put in some close branches where you can see leaves and olives.
Time to visit a walnut grove. Clearly, this is a walnut grove, no?
No. It is not clearly a walnut grove. All the lined up trees seemed difficult (read “impossible”). I started with the closer trees.
Here you can see the main reference photo. It was a little tricky to condense a rectangle into a square and do it believably. I don’t feel the need to put in every tree. I do feel the need to have the trees line up in their rows. (How do farmers plant their orchards so perfectly?)
I got tired of brown, so I moved to the distant horizon line and put in the sunlit green in the distance, and then patches of sunlight on the ground. It isn’t as close to finished as the olive grove painting, but I ran out of daylight and the cats wanted to reclaim the workshop as their cafeteria and dorm.
But first, I erased the center line on the road of this painting. There was a bit of a pickle here: I want cows, but that means a fence, and without a real photo of a fence in this position, it is too risky in terms of believability. I could do it if it meant saving all the women and children, but this doesn’t come anywhere near that sense of desperation. So, I messed up the center line and the asphalt, and when it dries, I will try to make it look like dirt or gravel, which means the cows won’t need a fence.
It was really getting dark out. I was cold, tired of difficult decisions, and the cats wanted dinner, so that was the end of my day of farming with a paintbrush in the groves, orchards and ranches of Tulare County.
It often just comes down to the little things, the details, those finishing touches on a painting that bring the most satisfaction. Here are five paintings that I added little things to on a single morning of painting.
Big Oak: I studied this painting for awhile and decided the dirt patch at the bottom might be too large— “might be” was enough to make me go back to touch it up.
I signed it too. Wow. Was that worth the effort? Maybe.
Square Orange Grove: I thought this was finished but maybe I wasn’t convinced, because I didn’t sign it. Trail Guy asked me why I hadn’t put orange blossoms on the close trees. Ummm, I forgot. . .
Excellent! And now it is signed too. All it needs is a title (I’ve been calling it The 16×16″), photography, and varnish.
Take Me Home: I tried to put a single leaf in tight detail on the road. It looked dumb. So, I put in texture to resemble dirt, rocks, sticks, and basic dirt road debris. Then I signed it. I don’t want to work on this painting anymore. (But I will if someone tells me something that would make a measurable difference.)
Homer Barn: I had forgotten to put the trees on top of the left hills, and the road wasn’t quite right. I worked on the shoulder of the road and added a layer to the field on the right.
Now I have to decide if it should have cows on the right, which will mean it needs a fence. I’ll just wait on these decisions until the road and other new parts are dry.
Dry Creek Wildflowers: more lupine and leaves on the skeletal tree were needed.
This could be signed now, but then again, I might keep “polishing”. I might want to keep this one. . . maybe I’ll just keep working on it so it isn’t ever quite ready to sell.
And thus we conclude another tour through painting the prettiest places in Tulare County.
I had a day that began in frustration, feeling as if I was spinning my wheels and wasting precious time. First, I made a big list of what needed to be done on paintings in progress, or what needs to be finished, or what should be started next. Then, I lost the list. So, I did my best to rewrite it from memory.
Next, I decided to see if I could sell my four broken watches on eBay. Sure enough, lots of people sell broken watches. I took photos, then began the process of listing them. I had to try four times, and it still wouldn’t take.
I was pretty frustrated, so I went for a walk. On the walk, I came up with a couple of good ideas for the upcoming (next fall) solo show at CACHE in Exeter. Then I encountered a friend walking the opposite direction. She reversed course and accompanied me to my destination. So, it was a good solution although I wasn’t planted in front of the easels.
Eventually, I made it to the easels where I started two new paintings.
Then, I tackled this one, an olive grove. Challenging, to be sure, but also forgiving, because who will say, “Nope, you have that limb in the wrong place!”
That’s what I did one day. It started with frustration and ended with incremental progress, both in the idea and painting departments.
P.S. The listing finally took on eBay AND I planted some tomatoes, ridiculously early.
I didn’t finish these four paintings in one day. I just made a little progress on each one. The color looks a bit off to me in each one, because I used the phone instead of the camera. Well, what did I expect? It’s a TELEPHONE!
This painting now has more light and shadow on the road. Is it enough? Can I be finished now?
This painting has touched up poppies. All that is left is leaves on the skeletal tree and blossoms on the lupine stalks. Maybe.
This painting is a 10×10″ and will become a walnut grove. Maybe. Kind of a difficult subject, but maybe all the practice on the top painting will make this less intimidating.
This 10×10″ painting is also intimidating and will become an olive grove. Maybe.
I said to myself, “Self”, I said, “It’s all hard at first, all intimidating, and it all works out with enough layers. So, keep painting these scenes of Tulare County, and do it with confidence!”
There! Guess I told her!
February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.
I love February. Wish it was longer.
Three paintings of Tulare County scenery were brought closer to completion on a productive day of painting. Two were fun, and one is still riding the struggle bus.
Not a lot to say about this other than I photographed each step.
It was fun to detail the unusual barn, and now I need to detail the road and lower right pasture.
This painting is really fun. I filled in green around the rest of the poppies, added more green in the lower regions, built the oak tree (needs the beginnings of spring leaves), and put the lupine stalks in place.
I took this painting to a life-long friend for her input. She has a great eye for design and has assisted me in the past. She suggested more of an overarching canopy and more detail on the road (which was also suggested by my friend and blog reader MB). I got this far on the canopy before the light ran out.
Maybe adding tire tracks, more light, and some dirt clods will be all this piece requires before it exits the struggle bus.
Did you know that Tulare County is home to the largest oaks in the country? The valley oak, quercus lobata is not what this big oak tree is. I found this tree somewhere along Dry Creek Road. I didn’t get close enough to know what kind, but I can tell by the shape that this isn’t a valley oak. It is unusually perfect, almost symmetrical, and all without ever having been pruned (except when cattle chew on the lower leaves.)
Once it is dry, I will sign it, paint the edges, and either photograph or scan it, so you can see it with its brighter and more accurate colors.