These seven oil paintings are now finished, dry, scanned, and available for purchase.
“Purchase” sounds so fancy; these paintings are ready to buy. (Is that better? Don’t want to get above my raising here.)
Any questions? Maybe the comment feature is working on this blog post. If not, we are probably friends in real life so you can email or call or lean out the door and yell or wave me over on the road or talk to me after church on Sunday. Lots of options for connecting.
Doesn’t that sound uncomfortable? What if you also had your shoulder to the wheel, put your back into it, and were toeing the line? How would you get anything done?
Fortunately, I only have to plant my feet in front of the easels. None of these photos do justice to either painting, but when they are finished, dry, and scanned, they will look better. Then when you see them in person, you will really like them.
How’s that for an abundance of confidence?
Finally finished this 8×10″ of the Craig Ranch. It is shiny and wet, not a good look.
Then I began a painting of a subject that I really love to see in person and to paint.
The base coat colors are wrong, but I did begin building the mountains correctly. White dries the slowest of all the paint colors, so this will need to rest awhile before I continue with the mountains.
You know that I haven’t painted too much this year. The green and orange paintings were a start. Then I got a message about a larger painting that sold, and suddenly I felt energized to paint again. (That painting will appear at the end of the month in a post about sold paintings).
So many artists have way too much inventory and continue to crank out paintings without regard to potential sales. I have a real aversion to too much stuff. When things aren’t selling, I evaluate the paintings to determine if the quality just isn’t there, or if interest in that subject has waned, or maybe I just don’t have quite enough exposure—a likely explanation in this time of no art festivals and boutiques. Sometimes I retouch a painting; other times I paint over the top with a new subject.
If a subject is popular, I will paint it often.
Currently, the most popular subjects are citrus, poppies, and Sawtooth.
Are these finished? Maybe, maybe not. If not, they don’t need a lot more work.
The previous posts were Green and Orange, so I decided to shake things up by calling this one “Orange and Green”.
I spent a few hours painting one sunny afternoon while a hummingbird went bonkers inside the workshop, refusing to leave. He buzzed and buzzed, while Jackson talked and talked to him, talked to me about him, and finally gave up.
This excitement didn’t interfere too much with my ability to concentrate, but I did lose interest after finishing 4 poppies. Then I smeared a bit of paint on the oranges before quitting entirely.
The 6×6 and 8×8 poppies are commissions, so there is incentive to get them finished. The other pieces are just for general inventory, so no one is clamoring for them. No shows are scheduled, and it is nice outside. I have some knitting projects, the weeds are going nuts, and maybe, just maybe, I am lazy.
P.S. Instead of being “lazy”, I decided that I am just be tired.
Green and Orange are secondary colors. They are mixed from the primary colors, red, blue and yellow. This is my palette before I started some new green and orange paintings. Instead of two yellows, I used three this time, because I had them all and they made mixing the right colors a bit quicker.
This is layer number one on a 6×6″ and an 8×8″ canvas.
More details are needed, and you can see that the color photographs in a murky fashion by the late afternoon light. This is the 8×8″.
Same same here on the 6×6. More details, weird color at the end of the day.
Both of these paintings are spoken for.
When I started publishing my pencil drawings as notecards, I had no idea that printing cards in color would become affordable.
SURPRISE!
I had no earthly idea that I would ever become an oil painter.
SURPRISE!
I had no idea that someday I would be selling a package of 4 cards for $10 instead of 10 cards for $5.
SURPRISE!
All of these notecard designs (and many others) are available here: Cabinart/Store/Notecards.
Sometimes I reevaluate paintings that I don’t like, trying to figure what bothers me. Sometimes I also reevaluate paintings that haven’t sold in a timely manner in spite of traveling to different locations. Sometimes paintings that have traveled develop flaws, scratches or unexplained booboos.
All of these situations can eventually be remedied.
A painting that has been in several locations without selling recently got returned to me because of a weird mark. I could easily fix the flaw, but I wasn’t ever particularly pleased with the painting.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
I like it better now.This is the Honeymoon Cabin in Mineral King, a mini-museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society. The painting is 6×18″, it is oil on wrapped canvas (framing unnecessary), and the price is $165 (+ 8% California sales tax).
Of course, I will have to work once in awhile if I expect to finish these paintings. There are many distractions in addition to an immature and unprofessional attitude about loafing since I had great sales in December, and so far, so good in January.Just give me a pair of minutes; I will look for my work-face (maybe).
P.S. Don’t be scared of these beginnings because I really do know how to paint, and everything starts out ugly.
Two years ago I had a great idea for an art project for Tulare County. I asked important people with good connections how to pursue the idea, followed instructions to get put on an agenda for a quarterly meeting, wrote a letter as advised, put together a Powerpoint presentation, and then everything was cancelled due to The Plague.
An arts organization in Visalia has recently put out the word that there might be an upcoming project, based on the idea that I never got to present. A friend overheard and notified me, and now I am working on my submissions for the unnamed project, unnamed because it isn’t real yet and there hasn’t been a “Call To Artists”.
It calls for art that is horizontal in a 2:1 ratio.
OF COURSE I thought of the current most popular subject matter that I paint, which is Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.
Trouble with that is the verticality of the subject matter. Will this work horizontally? The best way to find out is to try it.
Not wanting to spend a ton of time on a piece that might look wrong, I just did a quick messy first pass over the canvas of a 6×12 to get an idea whether or not it would be worth the effort.
If Sawtooth is big enough to matter, then the stream won’t fit. Black Wolf Falls barely fits. I am definitely fudging reality here. Does it matter? Does this work?
Maybe, maybe not.
Insert my regular cliché here; you know the one.
Remember all those oil paintings of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint? Sunnypoint was a Forest Service campground in Mineral King closed in the 1970s (or was it the 1960s? I wasn’t there then.)
The view that has been so popular is a bit made up. When you are standing where I have stood to take so many photos, year after year, of the same scene, your eyes tell you that the barest tip of Sawtooth shows. When you leave the exact spot, you remember it as a place where Sawtooth, Black Wolf Falls, the stream, and wildflowers are all coexisting in beautiful harmony.
It is my job to gather up all those pieces of reality and combine them into a believable fantasy for you. This beautiful fantasy, which matches up with peoples’ memories, has brought me back to the easel once again.
After a week of messing around, taking walks, editing 2 books, and staying away from the painting workshop, I finally went back to work.
The work that remains after this dries:
There is more to the story of multiple iterations of the Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint paintings. Mañana. . .