Wildflowers as Tiny Colored Dots

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Wildflowers drive my hiking choices, and ever since publishing Mineral King Wildflowers (almost sold out), I look for opportunities to put them in my oil paintings. Because I paint small, they end up as tiny dots. 

Doesn’t matter, because those tiny colored dots are magical enhancements of scenes that would otherwise be primarily green, gray and brown.

Remember this oil painting? It sold very quickly due to those tiny colored dots.

So, of course I painted it again. Here is the sequence.

Once it is dry enough to scan, I will show you a non-shiny version with colors that are closer to the real painting.

Chop-chop and Doing What I Want

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Here is another new Mineral King oil painting of an old subject, the Honeymoon Cabin, which is a museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society. It was in a state of rough first layer for a few weeks, and then suddenly July happened, which is when sales pick up at the Silver City Store.

Chop-chop, Central California artist!

8×10″, $125 (+sales tax), probably underpriced, quick, get it before I raise my prices.

I looked again at this painting of Sawtooth, which has been hanging for awhile as I mulled it over before putting it on the scanner. 

While flipping through my photos, I ran across one with my favorite yellow wildflower, Bigelow Sneezeweed (terrible name for a delightful bloom). I said to myself, “Self”, I said, “Why not?”

If this 6×18″ oil painting with its radical addition of yellow flowers doesn’t sell, I can always paint them out. I am 62 years old, self-employed, experienced in all subjects Mineral King, and I get to do what I want to my paintings.

Any questions?

Making Two Paintings Better

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.The other day I just sat in front of these two Mineral King oil paintings with Tucker shedding, purring, and slobbering on my lap. While holding my favorite cat (sorry Pippin and Jackson, but I have known your uncle a year longer than I have known you), I studied the paintings carefully, wondering how I could make them better.

The answer usually lies in better contrast, and shaggier edges. Not that shaggy edges are always the answer, but in this case a few edges were a bit smoother than real life.

Never mind. Just look now and see if they look better to you (bearing in mind that they are now too wet to scan and that they always look better in person).

Each of these paintings is 8×8″, and I spent way more time on them than justified by the $100 (+tax) sales price each.

It is probably time to raise my prices. That is hard to do, because people are just trying to keep food on the table and gas in the car, and art is not a necessity. (It is for me, but I think you understand my point.)

Seeking Calm at the Easels

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Sometimes life is hard. Oftentimes life is hard. Even if my own life is wonderful (and it is), life around is less than wonderful. Friends are suffering, the world seems to be on fire. I could list the worrisome items, but you probably have a similar list.

So, I will simply continue to seek calm at the easels.

I hope that seeing the progression of this Mineral King oil painting brings a bit of calm to your world.

Refocusing on Real Art

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

My real art is oil painting and pencil drawing. Road signs, deer cages, book safes are all just for fun. Useful fun, but fun, particularly because I listened to an audio book while working on them: Once Upon a Wardrobe, by Patti Callahan.

Then, I got serious and refocused on my real art.

I took this one all the way to the end.

Then I painted all the skies.

Next, I finished this one. Maybe. Now that I see it here, it is a bit too monochromatic for my tastes. (That means single colored . . . I wonder if wildflowers would look weird in the lower section. Certainly not believable, but maybe attractive.)

Finally, I finished another Sawtooth just before sliding into Idiotland.

Three down (maybe), five to go.

Mineral King oil paintings are the best sellers in the summer. The trick is to guess how many of which subjects and what sizes. 

I wonder if I could make a useful crystal ball??

 

Familiarity Breeds Comfort

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

“Familiarity breeds contempt” in some cases; in the context of my oil painting endeavors, familiarity breeds comfort. “Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint #8” is signed, sealed, and delivered, another commissioned oil painting in the archives.

This means I can move into another comforting subject, one that I love to paint, although this one has its own challenges. This oil painting commission came with much freedom. The customer didn’t care what orchard as long as it is oranges, wasn’t concerned about the foothills, and after much conversation (“Really, you must care about something specific here!”), he decided that Sawtooth and Homer’s Nose made the most sense for the visible peaks. His focus is the children, and he provided good photos.

If I were a loosey-goosey painter, this would be close to finished. Alas, I am a painter who loves detail and when this dries, I will begin drawing with my paintbrushes on this Tulare County classic view.

 

A New Oil Commission

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Custom art, or “commission” work might be the most satisfying piece of my business. I am painting something that someone really wants, painting with confidence that it will be loved, and confidence that it will be sold. 

Artists can be so insecure. We pour ourselves onto paper or canvas, creating something that really lights our fire, getting lost in the process, and then . . . what? Nothing happens.

So, when I get a commission, particularly one of something that I am familiar with (orange groves, sequoia trees, Sawtooth, cabins, or anything Mineral King), it is a real pleasure to paint.

Beginnings

The customers chose 16×20″. I primed the canvas, assigned an inventory number, and wired the back. Pippin hung around, but wasn’t interested in the details. (And the vase of lemon geranium may have repelled the mosquitos.)

It was near the end of the day, and I was in danger of falling into Idiotville, where Stupid, Sloppy, and Careless reside, so I set it aside for the day.

And this is how it looked after the next painting session:

That again? 

Yeppers, this time in oil paint instead of pencil. Not sisters this time—a brother and a sister, different grove. And no deadline, so I will spend oodles of time make this piece of Tulare County art perfect.

Oodles, I said.

Really Painting Sawtooth Again

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

I really am painting Sawtooth again. In fact, I finished the painting.

Clear, enlargeable photos, along with an operational swamp cooler, good podcasts, and nothing difficult hanging over my head made it easy to just git ‘er dun instead of looking for excuses to stop because it was too hard. Oh wait—must be experience that created the momentum.

See the South Fork Estates sign through the easel? That odd job is completed, which is why there is nothing hanging over my head. 

Here is the progression: I have finally learned how to scan and photoshop this size of painting in spite of it being too long for my flatbed scanner. When combined with Photoshop Junior, I can patch the 2 scans together.

This is not that; this is too wet to scan. But, it is finished!! Only took me seven times to get comfortable enough with this scene to be able to stretch it into a 6×18″. 


Are You Really Painting Sawtooth Again?

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Yeppers, another Sawtooth oil painting. Sawtooth is visible from the flatlands of Visalia on a clear day and is the signature peak of Mineral King. It has recently become the most popular of the Mineral King subjects that I paint, and a few weeks ago, someone commissioned another version of the “Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint” view. This is number 8, and the first one in the ratio of 1:3 (6×18″, vertical).

As usual, I started with a scribbly base, and then put in the sky, working my way closer and closer to the front.

Suddenly, I was confused on all those mountain ridges, so I dropped into the stream to pick apart the rocks. I photographed the stream in order to see the rock formations at higher water, before the seasonal growth obstructed my vision. I don’t understand water flow well enough to convincingly make this up.

This represents an afternoon of work, trying to perfect the detail on the first pass, knowing full well that I will need to make corrections as the other parts get completed. And then those “other parts” will need to be corrected.

It would be satisfying to spend as much time on every painting as I am on this one. But paintings don’t require the level of detail that pencil drawings do, it isn’t cost effective, and for the most part, my customers don’t even recognize that level of intense detail. (Not everyone is as near-sighted as I am, albeit it with strong cheater-readers these days.)

Links to other posts about painting Sawtooth:

  1. Department of Redundancy Dept.
  2. Lots of Sawtooths (Sawteeth? Nah)
  3. Almost finished with the Sawtooth paintings
  4. You just won’t believe this one
  5. Back to Sawtooth

Mineral King Is Now Open

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional cabin opening weekend. It is when Sequoia National Park unlocks the gate, and people begin backpacking and camping. Some years it feels like summer; some years it does not. This year was snow-free, but it did not feel like summer.

The classic view

This section was stripped of willows and other shrubs in the fire prevention efforts last fall. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through my photos to find one of how it looked before it got pruned to no avail.)

Monarch Falls and Creek are flowing well.

This is “Iron Falls” along the Nature Trail.

This is Iron Falls as recently painted.

The dandelions were prolific, bright, and charming (because they are not in my lawn).

This is the view of the stream that I painted 7 times over the winter in the Sawtooth oil paintings, and I took this photo in hopes that it will assist me as I paint #8.

This is painting #6 of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

As now seems to be the norm, there were dogs coming both up and down the Nature Trail with impunity. No one reads the signs, and no one cares. (There is a dog in this photo, although it is sort of a “where’s Waldo” type of view.)

We had a super clear day to walk up to Crystal Creek and the wind was quite icy.

This is the section that I think of as the Yellow Tunnel in the fall. The cottonwoods were just beginning to leaf out.

Crystal Creek was doing its normal spread into about 4 shallow branches.

Thus we conclude my first visit to Mineral King for 2022. May there be many more!