Too Random, Need a List

Too much variety means all of this could take up multiple posts, so a list will be the best approach today.

  1. There are now many new paintings listed on my website – For Sale–Oil Paintings–Landscape. If you sort by newness, you can see them.

    Honeymoon Cabin #28, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas, $100
  2. I finally finished coloring the grapes in my coloring book Heart of Agriculture.
  3. I started 2 other pages in the same coloring book. The ag coloring book is fun to me because there are so many colors besides just normal landscape colors. (The plum is light colored because that is how plums look hanging on the tree. The white stuff is called “bloom”.)
  4. I found a web designer! I will withhold comment until the job is finished, but so far, I am impressed. 
  5. It was good to be at Anne Lang’s for First Saturday February; I’ll return for First Saturday March.
  6. February is International Correspondence Writing Month. Ever heard of that before? There is even a website! They call themselves (who are “they”??) InCoWriMo

Cute Little Things

Cute little things? What is this about?

This is a post about 4 cute little oil paintings of various Mineral King scenes on boards, each one sitting on its own tiny wooden easel. (Well, yes, they are for sale – thank you for asking!)

White Chief – SOLD
Sawtooth
Vandever
Little Farewell Gap – SOLD

The rectangular paintings are 4×6″ and are $50; the squares are 4×4″ and are $40.

Such a deal! They are available on this page. (Sort by price, lowest to highest, and they will appear on the first page.)

Mineral King Painting Factory Phase II, 2

Now there’s a creative blog post title for you. . .  just the facts, ma’am.

I’m almost finished with this phase. Paintings need to dry, get signed, scanned, and varnished. Have a look at the various stages.

Cute little 4×6″ oil painting on board, on its very own easel.
2 scenes waiting for wildflowers, and a bridge awaiting some painterly confidence.
Drying from 2 sky do-overs.
Say buh-bye to the unwanted pomegranate.

Maybe next week I will have a host of completed, signed and scanned Mineral King oil paintings to show you.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory, Phase II

This year I have set the goal of finishing all the Mineral King oil paintings well before the season begins. The Silver City Store has been selling my oil paintings  since 2010, and it is good for them, for me, and for the customers. The past 8 years have provided a good idea of what sells and in what sizes and quantities. Why not look at this information and make a plan?

Phase I was finishing a large quantity of paintings in the month of January, some that were begun in December. The total was something crazy huge, like 2 dozen or so. I hadn’t planned on buying 4×6″ canvases or painting on 4 little boards that used to contain things like tomatoes, so the number went up. All this production forced me to figure out how to use my painting hours more efficiently, and in February, I am continuing with this plan.

(Do you need a nap yet? A cup of espresso?)

Phase II is filling in the gaps – do I have the right quantities of the best subjects in the most popular sizes? Nope, not yet.  Here is how beginning another 8 paintings looks. It’s not that pretty, but it is not as gross as making sausage, I guess, although I’ve never witnessed that operation.

Wiring and writing titles and inventory numbers.
Buh-bye, sweet little pomegranate that no one wants.
Skies come second, after I have “toned” the canvas, which is Artspeak for smearing the gunk from the bottom of the turpentine jar all over it and letting it dry.

There are about 6 more subjects I want to paint. These are also Mineral King, but they involve new scenes. 

If this seems a little repetitious to you, well, it is. It is a little repetitious to me to. That’s the thing about doing work for a seasonal business – it is repetitious because there are new customers every week, and they haven’t seen my paintings before. Or they saw them last year and want to add to the collection. Or, their friends saw their painting and wanted one too. 

Keep Painting, Central Calif. Artist

That’s me, talking to myself. Keep painting, Central California artist, keep painting!

I messed up and ordered 4×6″ canvases instead of 6×6″. This means I have some adjusting to do and some decisions ot make. 

The first step is to see how it is to paint on this size and shape.

The standard/classic Mineral King view of the Crowley family cabin with Farewell Gap in the background.
Vandever is the name of the peak that forms the right side of Farewell Gap.
The Honeymoon Cabin is tied with Sawtooth for the number 2 position in subject popularity.
The 6×18″ painting of Sawtooth sold before I put it on my web page for sale. Therefore, I am painting another 6×18″ of Farewell Gap with alpenglow.
Homer’s Nose is an interesting granite formation visible from the Yokohl curve, between Exeter and Lemon Cove. I love the view, but apparently I am the only one, so it is becoming Eagle Lake. Time will tell if there are more fans of Eagle Lake than of Homer’s Nose.
If you look very quickly at this rough version, you might get the idea of a lake forming.
This 8×10″ will contain a tremendous amount of detail. The challenge will be to emphasize the trail, keeping it from disappearing in all the textures.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 4

This is an 8×8″ of my tied-in-second-place Mineral King oil painting subject, the Honeymoon Cabin. It was part of the resort; then Disney bought up parts of the resort in hopes of building a ski area. That didn’t happen, and now this little cabin is a museum of artifacts and photos of Mineral King.

You saw it yesterday hanging on the wall drying. In my normal manner, I got things a little mixed up, posted yesterday as #4 and had today as #3. Then I switched things a few times and finally corrected it, but here is the Honeymoon Cabin at an earlier stage. I might be a bit dizzy from the oil fumes, or maybe the turp. Could be the propane, but I doubt it; the oil painting workshop room is extremely well ventilated (read “drafty”).

Oil paintings don’t dry very quickly; that is both the good thing about oil paint and the bad thing. Trail Guy set up this handy little shelf in front of the heater in the painting workshop/studio, and that will help things move along.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 3

Will these Mineral King oil paintings ever be finished? Yes. Then I’ll have to decide what to paint next. I’ll still need more Mineral King for my inventory (I’m painting ahead for the first time ever – finally have learned that summer starts on Memorial Day weekend and this year I will NOT be surprised.)

Some of these look like the same paintings as in other photos because they are the same paintings. I move them all around depending on their state of dryness. Some of them just look the same because the subjects are the same, only with differing amounts of snow or water or with different lighting.

The bridge is still a little bit too hard for me. It will have to wait until I am out of my Mineral King Oil Painting Factory Mode.

Aren’t these little 4×4″ boards sweet? I can’t sign my name on that size, so only put J.B. They will each sit on a tiny wooden easel, and will be $30 each. A man from Marin Co. told me he saw 2×2″ paintings sitting on tiny easels at $120 each.

Nope. Not moving to Marin County.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 2

Can you see that several paintings have some new paint on the mountains now? I paint from back to front; that means sky first, the farthest mountains next.

Wait! What is this? 

I decided to finish the largest one first. Then, I got close to finishing the 2nd largest one. The need to get some something completed overtook the efficiency of the assembly line method – too much delayed gratification there.

Then I went through my photos and made some quick decisions about those boards that used to contain vegetable and fruit paintings. The light was waning, so I just did some quick first layers. 

Hubba hubba, chop chop, git-‘er-dun. When the top three selling subjects are painted in sufficient numbers, I will go through my photos and choose other Mineral King subjects that challenge me a bit more. Different scenes mean different colors, shapes and textures.

Finished Oil Paintings

January was a productive month, all standard subjects that show off the beauty of Tulare County. November and December were good months, and my inventory got depleted. (This is a good thing.)

Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias XXXI, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×8″, $100 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias XXXII, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sunny Sequoias #33, 11×14″, $275 plus tax
Timber Gap with Lupine, 8×8″, $100 plus tax
Orange #137, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
Sawtooth #23, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Farewell Gap IIXXX, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Orange #138, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
White Chief, 18×24″, $650 plus tax
Sawtooth XXV, 6×18″, oil on wrapped canvas, $150 plus tax sold

There were actually FIFTEEN MORE, I am not kidding, FIFTEEN! But, they were too wet to scan at the time of this blog post. . . maybe that means they aren’t really finished. 

In case you think I am super-human, remember that the three largest were begun in December. I only FINISHED them in January. 

I need a nap.

What is that orange stuff?

Did you notice in the last photo of yesterday’s post that 4 little new paintings snuck onto the table?

These were the beginnings of some vegetable paintings – 2 pumpkins, a tomato and a pepper (and no, I don’t want to discuss whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable). After I figured out that the veggie market was saturated (at least among all my friends and family who buy my work, probably because they feel sorry for me) these just languished on a shelf, forgotten and unfinished.

Now that I am facing reality a little more realistically (from the Department of Redundancy Dept.), I know that these need to be Mineral King oil paintings. To fit on the miniature easels without toppling over, they need to be horizontal. I know they will have visible sky and that it will be at the top of the boards. 

Therefore, I have painted in some sky color. 

When I figure out which scenes to paint, I will hope that I put in enough sky.