Because I can’t start painting on the mural until afternoon, I can work on a new custom oil painting in the morning.
This is for a friend of mine. This house belonged to her grandparents, and she doesn’t have many photos other than the ones taken after the house changed owners. So, I am working from mediocre photos and verbal instructions from my friend/customer. Tain’t easy, but we can do this.
The way I decide whether to paint or to draw is: (1) Is someone waiting for this? (2) Is there enough light to paint? (3) Is it too hot or too cold in the painting studio?
Someone has commissioned me to draw 5 different cabins belonging to 5 different friends, all of whom lost their places to the wildfires all over the Central California mountains. This is an uncommonly generous man, and each one of these drawings will be a surprise, so I am not going to show you any of them. It is a little tricky for him to get photos from these friends and then to get answers to questions about the photos without giving away his surprise.
While I waited for the next batch of helpful answers and maybe some better photos, I returned to the easels. The smoke was abating some, and the weird dark orange-ish light was changing to a bit more normal color so I could paint (to the unsettling sound of helicopters overhead.)
Where to begin?
This one? (The greenery is lemon geranium, supposed to help keep the mosquitoes from chewing me to pieces while I paint.)
No, I need green. (The orange on the table got a green streak on it, so I touched it up first.)
This bouncing and detailing too soon approach is not the usual artistic method – it is just the way I cope with indecision at the easel. The helicopters and continuing fire were unsettling, it was getting too hot to paint, and I lost focus.
There is no rush on any of these paintings, but I have 4 large ones in progress and a fifth one in mind. I figured that any progress was better than just quitting.
Will it ever rain again? No fires? No smoke? No helicopters? Will we see some green?
See? Unsettled. I shut myself in the studio with the roar of the A/C to drown out the helicopters, write this blog post, and maybe just hold my pencils for awhile.
P.S. Still not finished.
Or should that be “Big Painting”?
This painting will take awhile. That’s okay – the deadline is over a year away!
With orange light, smoky air, hot temperatures, dirty skies, and ash everywhere, I am CRAVING GREEN. This desire made the decision for me on the Yokohl Creek oil painting.
Fall used to be my favorite season. Now I dread fall, because it is fire season, and I want spring to last forever.
BLOVIATION WARNING: The next paragraph is something I learned about fires, based on an interview I heard with a former employee of the National Forest Service, followed with my usual stack of questions.
There weren’t giant forest fires when I was a kid. That is when forests were managed and before logging was outlawed. The National Forest Service used to keep the trees to about 30 per acre; now that logging has been shut down, there are about 400 trees per acre. The man described this as “too much vegetation for the landscape”. He also talked about the high percentage of fires that are human caused (84%), and that most of them (90%) occur along roadways, which are no longer being cleared adequately. He was only speaking of Forest Service land, but I’m guessing the info is consistent throughout our state. Until the 1980s, there were 151 sawmills in California; now there are 30, with only one in Tulare County.
Where are we getting our lumber? Why are we importing it if there is so much just going up in flames right here in our own area? Doesn’t anyone care that smoke is ruining our lungs and our air? Doesn’t smoke hurt the environment? Isn’t it causing some unwanted warming of our tiny piece of the globe?
Oy vey.
Spring, rain, green, FOREVER, PLEASE!
P.S. It isn’t finished yet.
After many days of hunching over my giant magnifying light in the studio, the urge to paint became stronger than the desire to avoid smoky air, hot temperatures, and handicapping orange light. My paintings receive many layers, so if the colors and values are wrong at this stage, it is only temporary.
The photos are blurry. I am taking each cowboy and the dog all from different photos and sincerely hope to gather enough visual information to not mess any of them up. Entirely new territory for this Central California artist, but not outside of my declared geographical area of Tulare County. (Thank you to my friend Susan for supplying the photos!)
Time to move into more familiar subject matter.
As I continue to paint larger, the bigger ideas continue to come to me. I’ve been drawing more than painting lately, because I can shut myself into the studio with the air conditioner to filter the smoke.
Meanwhile, I do a little bit of preliminary work on the big ideas. Here are 2 of the latest. The top is 24 x 48″, and the bottom is 22×28″, leaning up against the 18×36″.
“Man-aze a lotta work ahead!”
P.S. HB, JC!
Trail Guy helps me with my art business in lots of little ways, and a few bigger ones too. He likes power tools, and by using one he was able to secure a wire to the back of the shutter so it can hang on a wall.
Will it hang on your wall?
For $250 plus shipping (oh my, it is heavy compared to my normal paintings) plus tax (welcome to California unless you live in another state, in which case I would advise you to count your blessings) this one of kind painting can be yours.
And remember, EVERYTHING looks better in person (except those aforementioned news babes – see the post titled “Farewell at Dusk” if you are wondering when they were mentioned “afore”).
My very wise dad used to say, “Life is a series of choices and decisions”. (My very wise friend still says, “Choices and consequences”.)
In preparing larger paintings while hoping for a show at a local-ish gallery, I have to keep in mind my mission, which is to show off the best parts of Tulare County with my art. One would think that choosing the best scenes would automatically result in sales; one would be wrong.
It is painting the scenes that people love, scenes that ring a bell, touch their hearts, resonate, remind them of good memories, and doing all this in the most excellent way possible that MIGHT result in sales. (Anyone have a crystal ball that I can borrow?)
There is a scene that draws me back, in any season with water in the creek, and I want to paint it on an 18×36″ canvas. It is Yokohl Creek.
This version isn’t quite it, and won’t fit on 18×36″ format. So, have a look at the cropped version:
Better, so I started on the canvas.
But wait! Spring is the most beautiful time of year!
Shall I try to convert the view I cropped to spring colors? First, let’s crop this view.
This still doesn’t have the same visual pizazz to me as the brown version. What’s a Central California artist to do?
More will be revealed. . . (and I bet you can complete that sentence.)
This year I have been painting larger, in between completing the commissioned custom work. Smaller paintings do well at shows, but all my shows have been cancelled. (By “shows” I mean arts and crafts boutiques, fairs, festivals, and other assorted events.)
My idea is to build up a body of larger works so that when a local gallery decides to give me an exhibit, I will be ready.
In that vein, I recently completed a 10×30″ oil painting of Farewell Gap (in Mineral King, of course) at dusk. As you look at the progression, remember that things always look better in person (other than the model-type news babes on teevee, because No One could possibly look That Perfect.)
I photographed it while still wet on the easel, and then tried to duplicate the color on Photoshop Junior. It isn’t right, but it’ll do for now.
. . . is now finished! (although still wet and shiny in these photos)
Now, will the old shutter be stout enough to support a hanging wire? More will be revealed in the fullness of time.