Painting in a Makeshift Studio in Mineral King

These photos are from Three Rivers yesterday morning around 9:30 a.m. We are under mandatory evacuation from Mineral King and cannot go there. Evacuation is voluntary for our section of Three Rivers.

This post is about time spent in Mineral King approximately 2-3 weeks ago.

I guess that any place an artist decides to paint can be called a studio. I painted on the back porch of the cabin. (I hope I get to do that again next year.)

First, I started three of the paintings at home.

These three along with 3 blank canvases went to Mineral King. Because paintings have been selling well at Kaweah Arts , I wanted to keep my inventory up for them.

It wasn’t an ideal situation for painting, but I made decent progress over the course of several sessions (while avoiding red fir cones that the chickarees were dropping out of trees in the backyard).

It involved days of moving them inside to the stairs at night and back outside to dry during the day.

These 2 might be finished.

When the others are finished, I will scan them. Maybe I will remember to show you. Maybe they will show up in a post about sold paintings.

Soothing Subject as a Distraction

As I write this post, the Paradise Fire (part of the KNP Complex fire) has been obscuring all views at home and giving me a passive smoker’s cough. It is threatening our cabin in Mineral King (mandatory evacuation) and possibly our home in Three Rivers (voluntary evacuation).

How is a Central California artist to cope?

By painting her favorite type of scenery.*

This was how it looked when I last showed you.

See how the colors look now? This is before I began painting, and it has a funny tint due to the smoky orange light outside.

To help me focus, I flipped it upside down, flipped the photo upside down on the laptop screen, enlarged it tremendously, and proceeded to draw with my paintbrush. The goal was to be as accurate as possible, working back to front in the scenery, and matching the mountains to the best of my ability while squishing the scene onto a canvas of different proportions than the photos. (Trickinology, remember?)

When this is dry, I will add the windmachines, oranges, signature, and edges.

Then maybe I’ll go househunting in Lemon Cove where they don’t have wildfires.

Nope. I am NEVER moving again.

Yeah, I know, “never say never”. Been here almost 23 years and I truly do not want to lose this place or to move.

*along with answering texts, phone calls, and emails from many concerned friends, listening to Mike Rowe’s podcasts, continuing to pray in less than coherent phrases throughout the day, and hanging out with cats.

Large Important Commission, Chapter 9

I left the oil painting alone for a week or so, in order to gain distance and objectivity. (Yes, wonky photo, because in spite of this camera’s superiority to its predecessor, the screen is still invisible in the bright sunshine).

Then I switched the photo to black and white, in order to study the contrasts.

This session of study resulted in a list.

  1. Make the snow brighter against sky
  2. The rock shadows on hillside are too dark
  3. Close leaves next to orchards need to be lighter
  4. Tree trunks look too uniform
  5. Too much contrast on wall rocks near books
  6. Need more roses below the wall
  7. Make shadows darker on front row of orchard
  8. Make oranges on the close branches brighter and more yellow
  9. The elephant on Alta Peak and the slope to the left of the elephant need to be fuzzier

All nine items have been addressed. Can we see the difference in this black and white version?

Maybe.

Here is the new color version (also taken in such bright sun, although filtered through a layer of smoke from the fire at Lake Isabella).

Obviously, this painting is going to be a challenge to photograph well.

Just for interest’s sake, here is the sketch (the post about it is here):

It has come a long ways since the beginning, first shown in this post.

And thus we conclude the ongoing saga of The Large Important Commission Oil Painting.

Maybe, maybe not. Maybe the books need to be less jarring. On the other hand, maybe they are supposed to pop out of the painting because it is for the Tulare County Library (Woodlake branch).

Oil Paintings Sold in July (Have you seen these??)

Is this going to be a regular feature of the blog? I hope so.

These are the paintings that sold in July. Did I show you these yet? I can’t find an answer to this question, so if you have seen this, consider it a rerun, because it is a rerun, unless it isn’t.

Good Grief Charlie Brown.

Oil Paintings Sold in August

This is Labor Day, so this is about some completed labors. Today I will share some oil paintings of Mineral King that sold as of mid-August at the Silver City Resort/Store.

I can’t decide if the sales are unusually high, or if I am simply thrilled because much of life seems less than thrilling these days. So, in the spirit of celebrating things for which to be thankful, rejoice with me.

Maybe it is showing off. Nah. I am just trying to be businesslike, reminding you all that:

I use pencils, oil paint, and murals to create art that you can understand of places and things you love for prices that won’t scare you.

But Wait! There’s More!

More oil paintings, finished and drying. Have a look at the process. The first one is a commission, the second is just because.

Oops. I forgot to take in-progress photos.

This one has more steps. You already saw the completed version in the Friday post about Mineral King, because this is a Mineral King oil painting, and I delivered it to the Silver City Store. (It could even be sold by now.)

I was very thankful to be able to find the original photo on the computer so I could enlarge to see what the mess of rocks in the stream truly looked like. 

Sawtooth as it looks (okay, I admit to slightly enhancing it) from the Nature Trail and the now famous Alpenglow on Farewell Gap, a commission delivered a few days ago.

“Famous”? Okay, I admit to slightly enhancing the claim.

Reporting on Sundry Items in Smoky Mineral King

I went to Mineral King with the weight of the world on my shoulders and heart. Terrible things in the world, the country, the state of California, and among several dear friends made me want to run away. It was a relief, but it wasn’t very pretty. My knee hurt, so I didn’t hike. Instead, I did a few chores, lots of knitting, sitting, and reading.

Here is one strange chore: Trail Guy and I noticed a tremendous number of nails near the old dance floor, so I took up a big magnet on a pole and together, we cleaned them up.

We stopped by the Honeymoon Cabin/Mineral King Preservation Society Museum to see a new item – a stamp from the stamp mill below the mines on Empire peak (and a couple of other unidentified metal objects). This is a surprisingly heavy piece of metal that smashed the ore to separate out the precious metals. I didn’t even try to lift it (my knee hurts).

In other news, I got some new “hiking boots”. Heh heh, this is what passes for hiking boots in my world of peculiar feet. Did you know Crocs makes a type of clogs with “Vibram” soles? They even have adjustable straps, fastened with Velcro. I hope my knee stops hurting soon so I can try them.

I spied some going-ons near the cabin. It was the wedding of a neighbor we don’t really know (because we are closer to her grandparents and there are way too many grandchildren to keep up with on their one weekend/year visits). They set up some sort of an archway, and I snooped through the trees.

Finally, I delivered another painting to the Silver City Store. It had to dry in the trunk of my car for a few days before I could leave it at the the store. Still striking while the iron is hot, in hopes that the great sales continue at least through Labor Day weekend. 

Just Another Day at the Easels. . .

. . .in a barely cool painting workshop in early August, but thankful for the swamp cooler. The day before, I stood the entire time while painting. This day I sat the entire time. 

Thank you to Reader Anne for the suggestion of using an egg carton for the ornaments. It sort of worked, but I ended up holding each one in my hand. They are looking better, but still have many layers ahead. These photos are just more teasers about how they are moving ahead without revealing much except that Hume Lake will be on one side.

I touched up the 8×16″ of Farewell Gap in Mineral King, but you might have to see it in person to catch the improvements.

Since Kelly’s Sunset (also in Mineral King) has sold, I painted another one. I have altered the placement of trees from Kelly’s original photo, and altered them again in version #2. In these photos, I can see that the angle of the left flank of Vandever (peak on the right) is too steep. Will anyone else notice? Will the piece not sell? More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

P.S. UPDATE: the smaller sunset painting with the wrong angle on Vandever and a single tree sold immediately.

Large Important Commission, Chapter 7

This large important oil painting commission is getting to be fun. With some custom art, the customer directs many parts of the process. With others, they cut me loose to just do my best and make it look good. This project is the latter. (so far)

The color on the top photo is early morning light in the painting workshop. I started with the close orange tree on the left, worked across the front row of the orchard, moved into the shadows beneath the orchard, and then began laying stones on the wall. The final photo shows the beginnings of rose bushes in the foreground.

I will continue correcting the colors, tightening the details, fixing wonky stone walls, and studying this until I know it by heart. It is large (for me), important, and deserves as much attention and care as I can possibly give, because there is no deadline!

P.S. Yes, that is a little stack of books. It will be improved on as the project progresses. Remember, this is for the Tulare County Library, to be displayed in their Woodlake branch.