You’ve seen most of these photos before. I am showing them again so you can see them all on the same page in order of progression on this painting. Besides, it will help me to see them all together because then I will know I have actually accomplished something.
A few more details (including the flag and porch railing), painting the edges, signing, and then maybe this will be finished.
I’ve gotten some helpful suggestions for dealing with the Sequoia oil painting that doesn’t please me.
First, I added the upper branches. (You’ve seen this.)
Next, I changed the green in the background forest to make it look more distant, and also strengthened the color and contrast in the main tree.
Finally, I added branches of a tree that was in the foreground.
Sometimes I think this painting might be headed for a dumpster.
The big sequoia painting is coming along. I had to rotate it on the easel in order to see the edge of my brush in order to accurately paint an edge. This might qualify as “drawing with my paintbrush”. Yeppers, that’s the way I paint.
These big paintings are S L O W. That’s okay – the show I am preparing for is a year away.
Oh no! The gallery just asked if I could switch from January 2022 to April of this year! I don’t know. I DON’T KNOW!
“Slow-poke” is a weird old word that probably has a good story behind it. This cabin isn’t a slow cabin; the painting of it is slow. Wait, no, the painter is slow. No, not slow–the painter is painting slowly.
Good Grief Charlie Brown.
I added shutters to the windows and door, changed the color of the cabin, began the dreaded lattice, added some dirt, tightened up the steps, began detailing the windows, changed the skyline and the forest in the background, and then needed to go have a smoke.
JUST KIDDING! I’ve never smoked anything in my entire life.
Isn’t it peculiar how the colors differ so greatly in different times of the day? When the painting is finished and dry (at this rate in another several months, GGCB), the scan should show the truest colors.
(But sometimes the process might scare you.)
After painting the snowy sequoia scene, 24×48″, these current 18×36″ pieces shouldn’t feel large to me.
Alas, they do.
I often tell my drawing students, “You can be fast or you can be good – you get to decide”. Then I say that in pencil, I get to be both fast and good. (If it is true, it isn’t bragging.)
In oil painting, it is necessary for me to be slow in order to be good, at least the way I define good (and my customers too, or they wouldn’t be customers).
These two oil paintings on the easels are going v e r y s l o w l y.
I am jumping all over the canvas (not literally, don’t worry), chasing around different sections, based on the colors I mix and what catches my interest. Eventually it will all get covered. 
The only difference between these two photos of the sunny sequoias is that I cleaned yellow off my brush on the second one. It was left from finishing the edges on the cowboy painting. The entire canvas needs to be covered multiple times, and wasting oil paint hurts my frugal heart, so now there is a strangely colored first layer near the bottom.
(But sometimes her early color choices might.)
Some people get the words “studio” and “gallery” mixed up. A studio is where one creates art (as in “study”), and a gallery is where art is displayed and sold (we hope).
I have two studios: one is my real studio, where I draw and do computer things and paperwork; the other is actually part of a giant workshop building attached to our garages where I paint. It is a mess, which is fine for a place to paint, because sometimes I drop paintbrushes or spill turpentine. It is also where our three cats live safely at night.
This is a recent look at the workshop, my painting studio. Paintings in various stages of progress and drying are occupying the visible space; other paintings are stacked on shelves, waiting to be finished. Blank canvases are also stacked on shelves and leaning against the shelves too; since painting large, it is a little trickier to manage my canvases, especially when they are wet.
All this is in preparation for a show scheduled for January 2022. (If you see something you want to buy directly from me and not wait for it to be in a gallery, let’s talk!)
(but sometimes the painting workshop might be a little scary.)
After adding the birch branches to the Hard House oil painting commission, I happened to look at an oil painting of a Sequoia in my studio. For some reason, I haven’t really liked this painting very well.
Since it hasn’t sold, maybe no one else likes it either. After working on the sequoia mural and the giant snowy sequoia oil painting, I had an idea of how to improve it.
It always feels weird to put a completed painting back on the easel. It is a blend of feeling good about knowing I can improve it, and feeling a little embarrassed that I didn’t figure it out sooner.
Okay, now look:
Maybe I can do better. It took awhile to recognize the photo I used for this painting because I have definitely used it as reference only rather than an exact recipe.
Maybe I’ll keep messing with it. The contrast could be heightened on the main tree, and maybe a foggy looking distant sequoia would look believable behind it to the left, as in the photo. All the distant trees could be made grayer or lighter or something that shoves them farther back.
Who am I to think I can improve on nature? The answer is this: I am someone who understands that real life is messy and artists get to clean it up. For example, look at the large amount of dead branches on the 2 trees to the left of the main tree in the photo. What purpose would they serve in this painting? Likewise with the young tree in front on the right side – it obstructs the view of the big tree.
So many decisions for just one painting – it is a wonder I can even decide what to wear in the morning. Aha! That explains why I often don whatever I left on The Chair the night before.
Before sending the photo to my friend/customer of the oil painting of her grandparents’ house, I studied it on the computer screen, comparing it to the photo.
The mistakes in perspective and proportion just knocked me sideways.
Some were fixable, some are not. Back on the easel it went with the main problem being the bay window.
My friend didn’t notice any trouble there but asked that window on the balcony to be turned into a sliding screen door, and for some grass to be planted in front of the porch.
After I did those things, I noticed another problem with the balcony and changed the proportions there.
It needs to dry, and I need to figure out when to say when.
And chances are that if you read this far, you are probably yawning and wondering what all the jibber-jabber is about. My friend is very patient, doesn’t understand all my pickiness, and is happy with the painting, now in her possession.
Meanwhile, I will keep working to. . .
(Although sometimes the process scares me.)
When I started oil painting on March 8, 2006, I first drew out the painting in pencil on the canvas. Now I simply scribble with a paintbrush. One thing I do that is similar to drawing is to turn the canvas upside down.
What is this mess?
It is Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park on a large (for me) 18×36″ canvas.
This is one more large oil painting toward the show that is coming at a Visalia gallery in January 2022.
With each painting, I eventually. . .
Now that the commissions are almost all finished, I can return to some of the larger paintings that I began last summer. I have an exhibition coming in January 2022. This will be the first time for me in a gallery for quite awhile, so I want to have some real knock-your-socks-off paintings for the show.
Remember the cowboy painting back in October? (Probably not – why would you?)
It got this far and then the commissions started coming in.
Saddle up, Cowgirl! (The light is so different at different times of day, different times of the year, different methods of photography.)
These guys, their horses and the dog are quite challenging with nothing but blurry photos. I should be used to this by now.
The cowboys are looking better but someone probably needs to call a veterinarian for that poor canine.
Better now. Jackson is certainly curious. (That is his pink nose in the sunshine behind the painting.)The edges need paint, and it needs a signature, but I will let it dry and think about it for awhile yet before deciding if it is truly completed.