Painting Chickens

I’m never quite sure what to do with these 2×2″ canvases. I thought I was ordering 6 but ordered 60 by accident. (This was quite a few years ago.) They are difficult to paint, and it doesn’t seem right to ask more than $20 apiece. Each canvas with an easel cost me about $3, and each one takes about 2 hours to complete. I probably could find a better paying job than this, but I’d have to put on real shoes and leave the house.

This was the first pass over the canvas. I wasn’t sure whether or not they were worth finishing, and I couldn’t find anyone to tell me the answer to this. Sometimes it might be nice to have a job with a boss to tell me what to do because then stupid decisions wouldn’t be my fault.

Now they are finished, except for signing. That is its own challenge on a canvas too small for a signature. (I sign the edges, and they have to dry first.)

Only the chicken in the middle remains at the time of this post – the other two have sold.

What is this unit?
Maybe you can tell here.
I bet you’ve figured it out by now.

I completed the first pass, waited a few days, and then revisited the painting with my tiniest brushes and strong magnifying glasses (the ones that melted a big divot in my stereo), There is never too much detail in my estimation.

Original oil painting, cleverly titled “Rooster”, 8×8″ on wrapped canvas, $100

Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.

Grapes, Again

Is watching grapes get painted about the same as watching paint dry on a fence?

Don’t answer that!

Outlining the grapes first seemed like the right approach.
I wanted to start filling them in before the outlines were finished, but restrained myself.
Sometimes it is easier to support my hand in a different position. Besides, to draw a circle, it is best to be on the inside of the circle.
I filled them in from top to bottom, and for the most part, I just ignored the photo. And grapes come in all sorts of shades of purple, violet, red-violet, greenish purple (gurple), so no matter what I do within those boundaries, it will be believable.
And kept rotating the canvas as I went.

When this is dryer, I will add brighter sunshine on the edges of some of the grapes. That contrast is what made me go for my camera when I saw these grapes.

And now it is dryer, and I am finished! Looks better right side up, yes?

Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.

Growing Some Grapes

A dear friend bought some little fruit paintings for her dining room a couple of years ago.

She decided that another painting would look good on the other side of the window. I agreed.

We discussed the options, and she thought grapes would be good there. I told her that grapes are crazy hard, so we discussed another option, maybe a collage, but the design process made grapes sound pretty good. She and I have been friends since about 5th grade, and I am willing to do crazy hard for her. Crazy hard in painting beats crazy hard in design right now. . . don’t know why, but that’s the way it is.

The pink line is just a weird thing that my computer does some times – it is not part of the painting.

 

Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.

Building a Store

As we last saw it.

Until I began this painting, I never noticed that the sign above the door is not centered.

Now there are chairs on the porch and geraniums in the window boxes.

And now, it is finished! Next, I’ll sign it, paint the edges, wait for it to dry, scan or photograph it, varnish it, wait for it to dry again, and then mail it.

Pumpkins

This the season of pumpkin spice everything. This blog post is pumpkin, minus the spice.

I posted this photo of paintings in progress.

A regular blog reader said she’d like to buy the painting. I touched it up, signed it, varnished it, and mailed it off to her. I forgot to scan it, so this is the best I could do from the above photo to have a record of the painting.

And here is the email conversation I had with this friend/reader. I found it charming and appropriate for Pumpkin Spice Season.

I collect pumpkins (since I have an October birthday)

It started with my 60th birthday … instead of gifts … I asked for pumpkins … have the givers name on the bottom of each .. so when I set them out,  I am remembered of how much I am loved!   

I actually started with some of my own, and friends knew I liked pumpkins prior to my 60th.  

And some friends gave me multiple small ones… disclaimer that I have sooooo many friends!  Ha ha.   

For me .. the gift of friendship was most important,  and this was a reminder of those treasured friendships.   I just turned 64 and at this stage I don’t want (or need) stuff.  I want time with those I love.

To top it off, she shared these photos with me, which I like so much that I am sharing with you. 

Thank you, Anne, for sharing your pumpkin friendship thoughts and including my painting in your collectoin.

Summer Sales, Part Two

Did you forget that I was showing you the Mineral King oil paintings that sold in Silver City over the summer? Here is the other half:

As before, the sizes shown here are a little whacky in terms of how they are relative to one another. I was shocked by the stellar rise of the Honeymoon Cabin to the top position this year and also shocked by the relative unpopularity of Sawtooth. One, maybe two, are all that sold of that subject, previously #3 in popularity. The second top seller was the view of the Crowley cabin and Farewell Gap as seen from the bridge.

What a year! If the economy keeps clicking along this way, next year I may bring some of my larger pieces. In the past, people admired them, but they didn’t sell and then I didn’t have them when I needed them for other places and events down the hill. But who knows. . .?

THANK YOU, SILVER CITY RESORT!

P.S. I accept commissions for oil paintings; NOW would be a good time to ask if you’d like something by Christmas.

Summer Sales

Since 2010, the Silver City Store has been selling my oil paintings. It began as a tentative experiment, with no confidence that visitors up that rough road would want to spend their hard-earned dollars on original oil paintings rather than (or in addition to) tee shirts and post cards.

The highest number of paintings that sold in the past summers was 16.

In 2018, the store was remodeled to a brighter more spacious place with a new elegance, and the economy is doing quite well. These two reasons together might be why THIRTY-ONE paintings sold this year! (The gracious store manager says it is also because people like my work. Aw shucks, thank you, Hannah!)

When painting the same subjects over and over, naming becomes a problem, and I rely on my inventory numbering system to keep the paintings straight. But sometimes I don’t include those numbers when I bill the store, so my records are a teensy bit wobbly. So, I won’t show you all thirty-one paintings, but here are half of the ones I was able to track down a photo of. The other half will come later.

The sizes they appear here on the blog are not accurate in terms of how they look against one another. For example, the painting of Eagle Lake was 6×18″, and the one directly above this paragraph was 4×6″.

I gathered a few ideas of what to paint in which quantities and sizes for next year, and hope I don’t lose my notes.

P.S.(If you click/tap on the link to the store website, which will open in a new tab, you may notice some similarities between our websites – I used the same web designer as they did)

A Tree Grows

6×18″ Sequoia Gigantea/Redwood/Big Tree, first pass.
Second pass
3rd pass
4th pass was when it got fun.
Detailed and drying. (signed, too)

While I was growing a tree, this was happening outside the painting workshop.

Sequoia Gigantea II, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×18″, $150 (plus tax)

Little Boutique in Lemon Cove

Happy Birthday, Jim! (We’re still in the Fs. . .)

Ever been to Lemon Cove? If you’ve gone to Sequoia from Visalia, you’ve passed through it. I think of it as Lemon Curve. . . a few curves on the highway, and you are outta there.

There’s a little boutique at the Lemon Cove Womans Club (yep, that’s the real spelling) on Saturday, October 20, called the Harvest Boutique, from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. The Womans Club is on Highway 198, and it looks like this (if you first vacuum all the color out of life):

For the boutique, I’ve painted some new small citrus oil paintings, 4×6″ and 6×6″ (priced at $50 and $60 plus 8% California sales tax). Although this is LEMON Cove, there is more than one type of citrus art here, and please take note of the highly creative titles.

Mandarin
Lemon
Two Oranges
Navel
Navel Two
Two Lemons

The Rest of the Sequoia Oil Painting Saga

SS brought me this oil painting:

There’s a story here. . .

I thought it was this one:

Sunny Sequoias IXX, 8×10″, sold (twice)

Then I thought it was this one:

Sunny Sequoias XI, 8×10″, sold

I can’t find the photo that I used to paint any of these, so I have to rely on my experience of painting Sequoia trees to just improve the painting.

Here it is wet on the easel; is it improved? I think so. Will SS? I like it much better. The questions are still unanswered, but the painting is now finished (until someone else brings it to me from another antique store in another 10 years?)

Sunny Sequoias IXX, 8×10″, sold (twice!)