The green looks a bit uneven because it is wet. Those tiny white letters were challenging, nay, CHALLENGING!
The two sided A-frame mural (sign? what is this thing?) needed a few touch-ups.
In case you are wondering, yes, I can name all the flowers. They are all foothill flowers, not in my wildflower book Wildflowers of Mineral King: Common Names.
Other than getting the quail as close to reality as possible, this side was just lots of scribbling in brownish yellows and yellowish browns.
Back to the coat of arms painting, an odd job of an oil painting commission.
I mixed and applied the correct green, along with a strong purple for the bottom ribbon. (It will need some detailing).
Then I mixed and applied a more golden yellow and a stronger blue.
The edges are a little weak, but the entire piece will get black outlines. This is a simple painting, but there is very little forgiveness with strong colors each abutting other strong clean colors. It requires a lot of drying time in between layers.
Yesterday I showed you the not-so-good green on the background of the odd job, a Coat of Arms for my customer/friend. (Remember, “odd” means “unusual” – I am NOT insulting my friend or her job here!) 
Since beginning to oil paint, I have met up with two new yellows and one new blue. It is time to get a grasp on how they all interact to make greens.
My friend said, and I agree, “More Kelly than lime”. Photoshop Junior used Kelly green, but I wasn’t very careful with mixing in the first pass over the canvas.
Clearly we need the second green down in the middle row.
Better, but too wet to continue.
Tomorrow is the end of the month listicle.
This coat of arms will have to wait. Another odd job awaits! (How’s that for an exciting cliff-hanger?)
After my customer sent me a chart of colors to include, it was time to try it with Photoshop Junior to see how it would look. Looking at her list of colors within the Coat of Arms, I saw that green was missing, so that became the background. 
This is actually the 2nd or 3rd iteration from many conversations and adjustments as we worked out the design together.
The pointy-pokey waving arms didn’t please her, so she sent many other design to consider. I developed a more ribbon-like look on the left side.
The symbolic Farewell Gap needed simplification too.
We had a few more discussions about black outlines, smoothing out some of the bends in the purple ribbon.
Everything is now ironed out, so it time to move to canvas.
Tomorrow. . .
P.S. I am guest posting once a week on the Mineral King Preservation Society website, under the topic of “An Artist’s Inspiration”. The first post went live yesterday. www.mineralking.org
“Odd” means “unusual”, as in I’ve never done this before.
I’ll give you a break from Mineral King wildflower oil paintings and show you my new project. This is a commission, which is a fancy word for custom art work.
A customer/friend sent me this and asked if I could do an oil painting of her family’s coat of arms.
I said something like, “Sure, but first we’ll have to decide on some color.” She then sent me this.
So I looked up meanings to the parts of Coats of Arms. We learned even the colors have meanings.
Next she sent me this.
Time for some Photoshopping (I use Photoshop Elements, which is really just Photoshop Junior).
Come back tomorrow to see how this developed.
Are you tired of these posts yet?
In rethinking these paintings, I realized that this view is probably from White Chief. Or it could be from the Eagle/Mosquito trail. So, not all of the little Mineral King wildflower paintings are from the Franklin/Farewell Gap trail after all!
Let’s try this again with Mineral King wildflower painting #2.
I wonder if I show a painting a day if people will stop reading my blog, or if I will sell paintings.
I finished 8 little oil paintings of Mineral King wildflowers and realized that every single photo I chose to paint from was from the same trail. Well, duh. That trail, the Franklin/Farewell Gap trail, is always the best place to find reliable wildflowers. There are other places that are off-trail, but I don’t want to put that type of information on the World Wide Web.
Okay, time for painting #1, titled “Mineral King Wildflowers 1” (Clever, I know.)
When I told you the story of painting a commissioned piece of Lost Canyon, I may have accidentally misled you into thinking that all the changes and decisions were a nuisance.
Not so!
The customer and I had a great working partnership. He was discerning and decisive and helpful, not a pain in the least. My goal was to paint exactly what he wanted, but also to help him explore the idea even further than his initial request. We both enjoyed the process and ended up happy with the result. (The color is way better in person!)
