River, lake, sequoia tree, river, lake, sequoia tree, river. . .

With the exception of Jeff’s Garden (a commissioned oil painting) and painting a giant sequoia on a wooden panel, I have not painted this summer. This was planned, not accidental. The swamp cooler in the workshopo is loud, fairly inadequate for our summer heat, and has been springing leaks all summer.

Kaweah Arts, a great art gallery/gift shop in Three Rivers, sold more paintings than I anticipated this summer, and other than one backup 6×18” sequoia oil painting, I have no inventory for them. Therefore, it is time to evaluate which sizes and subject matter are selling the best and choose new subjects accordingly.

River, lake, sequoia tree, river, lake, sequoia tree, river. . . Not exactly like that but close enough that I can read the tea leaves, so to speak. Sure, I’d like to paint yarn, iris, a cat, a favorite cabin window, and other everyday items that float my boat, but Mama didn’t raise no fool. (That’s three clichés in one paragraph!!)

My physical photos are arranged in a miniature filing cabinet, and of my 37,000 photos on the laptop, many are set aside in folders to consider painting for my various vendors. I prefer to sell in gift shops instead of non-existent galleries… non-existent around here. As a regionalist from Quaintsville who only paints what I know (except for those very welcome commissions from Anywhere, USA because overseas shipping is out of my league), I’ll let those fancy far-away galleries full of educated ArtWorld city folk do their own thing without me.

Here’s how it looks as I choose the most likely candidates for new paintings and pair them to canvases, all small sizes because they need to be packable for those travelers.

I know you must be curious about the wooden box of tools. I salvaged 3 drawers from an abandoned art studio that was about to be demolished, and they work well enough in this shelf of cubbies that was about to be demolished, which fit perfectly in our workshop where I paint, Trail Guy putters, and the cats spend their nights. (Are you starting to see a pattern in how I accumulate furniture and tools?)

Do you like this table? It is about 32” square, solid wood, the top needs refinishing, and if you want to own it, come get it. A friend (who isn’t as obsessed as I am with not wasting old things) wanted it to go away, and now I need to find a home for it.

First I put on the D-rings. Next, the wires, my worst favorite part. Ever notice that those pliers which are supposed to cut wire only work the first 3-4 times you use them for that purpose?

Alrighty then, seven canvases, all numbered, wired, and ready for the first layer of oil paint.

I finally no longer stress about how ugly the paintings look on the first layer. (Only took twenty years)

Lake, river, oak tree, sycamore tree. (Please please, kind tourists, allow me to paint other trees besides sequoias!)

River, sequoias, Alta Peak

Obviously, I didn’t follow the formula that appears in title of this post. Local folks sometimes want our landmarks rather than the usual tourist choices. Sometimes people ask where I get my inspiration. First, I want to paint what sells because I came here to earn a living and not have to be a secretary or a waitress. Life costs money, particularly if you choose to drive old vehicles.

Second, I love photography, mixing colors, figuring out composition, eliminating the messy stuff, and creating pictures that remind people of the good stuff of Tulare County, right here in the heart of California’s flyover country. (But remember, don’t move here because we are all fat, have diabetes, high unemployment, the worst educated city in all of the entire country as our county seat, bad air, and no Trader Joe’s.)

Third. . . I forgot. Two is enough.

Fast or Good?

My drawing students are used to me telling them, “You can be fast or you can be good; I get to be both.”

The braggadocio recently got tested. Someone had an art emergency, and gave me about 5 drawing days to complete a commissioned pencil drawing. There were more calendar days than just five, but I can no longer do detailed work in Mineral King (eyes too old and no drawing table or electricity for the magnifying light or to recharge the computer when using photos from it), and I had a funeral to attend, groceries to buy, and some sprinklers to keep running (the landscaping project at church, can’t find the link but you prolly* don’t need to see it anyway, and who cares about “SEO” and all the internet hoops to increase visitation, mostly by scammers and robots? Not this little gray duck.)

First steps

The customer had to get to the cabin, sneak photos when the intended recipient of the drawing was gone, and text them to me. Then I had to transfer them to the laptop and sort through, finding duplicates, organizing by potential usefulness. There were many important questions to be answered: Is the garage important? Is the fire ring important? May I move the sign? Where is the name of the cabin? Is the fairy house important? How many umbrellas are usually on the porch? May I leave off some of those lounge chairs?

Second step

Slammed out a sketch for approval. (I’ve whited out the cabin name and address because after all, this IS the World Wide Web, and we respect privacy in this corner.)

Good thing the customer has faith in my ability to draw. This sketch was fast, but it wadn’t* good by any stretch other than it shows what will be in the drawing.

Starting

I started laying it out, and then got a little tired of that. Shading is the funnest* part, so I started in the upper left so that my right handedness doesn’t smear as I work across.

At the end of the work day (nope, not using the tiresome cliche “at the end of the day”), I was this far along.

I love to draw!

*Wadn’t” is right there with “tryna”, “prolly”, “liberry”, and “Remorial Building”. You may recall that I attended high school in Visalia, the least (second least according to another article) educated city in the entire United States. Let’s just have some fun with that fact.

P.S. If you happen to recognize this cabin, stay quiet about it, PLEASE!

Four Reasons that Selling Art Makes Me Happy

  • It gives me confidence to continue.
  • It clears out inventory to make room for new art.
  • It affirms that I am not wasting my life making things that no one needs or wants.
  • It provides an income, because life costs money.

Now let’s look at the pieces that have sold in the last several months, at Kaweah Arts, Stem & Stone, Exeter’s Mural Gallery, the Silver City Store, and through my website and people I know.

Three disclaimers:

  • Had I owned the new scanner when many of these were completed, they would look better here on your screen.
  • All paintings look better in person.
  • You have seen some of these already, since I often show you them in progress.

Thank you for sharing in my happiness, and remember:

USING PENCILS, OIL PAINT, AND MURALS, I MAKE ART YOU CAN UNDERSTAND, OF PLACES AND THINGS YOU LOVE, FOR PRICES THAT WON’T SCARE YOU.

P.S. Excuse me for shouting. Sometimes I get a little over-excited.

Two in the Wild

A faraway friend got a thrill and texted me about it.

She was in the downtown area of her town, went into a gift shop, and was floored to see two pencil drawings of Mineral King. Upon recognizing them, she took some photos and texted me.

These were reproduction prints which used to be my “bread and butter” type art. It was almost automatic when I finished a new drawing to get it printed, sign, number, package, and sell it.

I guess someone who lives 700 miles away got tired of these two drawings and somehow they ended up in this gift shop.

This is Beulah, which was the historic name of Mineral King. The collage was done using historic photos, and these prints didn’t sell nearly as well as drawings of current scenes. It is priced at $295!!

That’s okay. I get tired of the art hanging on my walls and rotate it out. Unless it is my own painting. Wait, I do pull those off the walls if they seem appropriate for a particular show or a potential customer has expressed an interest.

This is my first version of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Family cabin. I’ve drawn it many times since, and if you look at the drawings in chronological order, the growth is evident. (The growth of the artist’s skill, not those trees, one of which is now history.) This is priced at $150 or maybe $195—my spy was so excited that she forgot the amount!

The shop owner was quite thrilled; having someone recognize the subject and the artist validated her selection of merchandise.

Thank you, ‘70s Ranger Daughter Mari for discovering this “vintage cabin art”!! And thank you for getting in touch to tell me the story and sharing your photos!

FOURTEEN Things Learned in the first 1/2 of June

Last month I had my head in the sand or something. This month I did so much learning that I’m publishing this post 1/2-way through the month, with the (always reckless) assumption that there will be more to learn in the second half of the month.

TECH

  1. My iphone is too old for a new battery because of planned obsolescence. It still worked but only charged intermittently, and although it is an inferior camera because of pixelation, it was able to capture colors and light better than my PHD (Press Here, Dummy) Canon Elph. Thus, I bought a “pre-owned” (remember when we used to say “used”?) iPhone 14 (the latest version that will work with all the portable charging equipment I just spent too much money for) to use both as a phone and as a camera (like normal people do). There is much to learn, since it has no home button, and things just work differently. Good grief, life is So Very Complicated.

2. The new solve-all-your-problems iphone goes straight to voicemail without ringing. When I asked the Duck, the first answer is that it can take up to 72 hours for it to be ready to ring (to “finish porting”.) To quote my Dad, “Humph”. (It fixed itself, so the Learning here was to just wait.)

3. When I told a friend about my tech decision and the need to find a used iphone 14 for photography, she told me about a site called Swappa. Have you heard of this? BestBuy in Visalia had the phone for $399; Swappa has them for $200-$400. Even in this decision, there are many more decisions to be made—14, 14 Pro, 14 Plus, 14 Pro Max.two lenses or three lenses? Locked or unlocked? JUST STOP ALREADY! (Is this why I frequently escape into fiction?) Forget it. I bought mine in person at Best Buy where 2 different very nice helpful and mostly knowledgeable people helped me. (and I read a library book while I waited for all the transferring to finish.)

4. I learned to transfer all the stuff from the old phone to the new one, along with how to set up email in the new phone (by carefully copying all the weird nonsensical answers used on the email account on my laptop, including everything that said “optional” because no, it’s not optional; you MUST fill in all the blanks.)

5. When emails arrive and say “This email has no content”, I can drag the message out of email onto the desktop and the text will appear. No one understands why, so I’m just glad I found this workaround instead of automatically deleting those emails.

Neighbor cat sometimes walks with us.
Pippin, GET OFF THE ROAD!
Tucker loves his grass.

6. Buy It Now is a way to put an easy button on my blog that takes people to Paypal to buy things. That’s great if the item is available. However, I learned (the hard way) that people can search out an item on my blog and the Buy It Now button still works in spite of no longer having the item. This meant that I also had to learn how to go through my PayPal account and delete every Buy It Now button.

7. Because of this Buy It Now button situation, someone ordered copies of Trail of Promises, which was out of publication. I learned that because I have the computer files for both the text and the cover of the book, it can be reprinted one book at a time (AKA Print-On-Demand) on Lulu.com. So, now Trail of Promises is once again available!

BOOKS

8. I learned about a book by some people called America’s Cheapest Family. If it is interesting enough (and if I remember), I’ll tell you about it next month.

9. Trail of Promises is available again after a several year hiatus, thanks to the marvelous print-on-demand services of Lulu.com. This book is a well-written true adventure story, my favorite of Louise Jackson.

10. The Visalia Electric Railroad also now available on Lulu.com. Even if Tulare County history doesn’t float your boat, I think the book is worth it for the photos. Here is my favorite one:

11. Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, finally has a new book out: The Calamity Club. It is based during the depression and is a depressing story with a good ending. Hard to put it down, gave it 5 stars on GoodReads, but I don’t want to read it again.

MORE INTERESTING & MORE IMPORTANT

12. Davidson’s fritillari is a brand new-to-me flower in Mineral King. My new friend TC discovered it, marked the trail so I could find it, and then it still took me forever to spot it. What color would it be under in a wildflower book??

13. Restaurants, especially fast food types, have been closing because so many people are taking those appetite suppressant drugs. People are changing clothing sizes so quickly that stores are raising their prices to compensate for all the lost revenue that results from all the exchanges and restocking.

14. My friend Bill, William R. Winn, M.D., died. We spent 10 years working together on his two books, Tales of TB and Springville’s Hospital. When we met, he told me it was “hard to get through one’s eighties”. He missed age 90 by 3 months. I will miss him for a very long time. Such a fine gentleman, humble, kind, eager to learn, determined to not be beaten by tech or health troubles, persistent, focused.

Business in the Mountains

The Silver City Store sold two Mineral King oil paintings on opening weekend; a few days later they sold a sequoia tree painted on a wood panel.

Luckily for a future customer, I had one more ready to go. So, on the way up the hill last week, we stopped by to deliver it. While there, I took a few more interior photos. The store is good to me*, and I happily advertise for them.

This year I have brought a few pencil reproduction prints of appropriate subjects. It’s been awhile since those were on public view.
Sawtooth on the sawblade is not for sale.
I designed this logo several decades ago and they are still using it. One of the original mugs (doesn’t say “Mountain Resort”) is on my drawing table with colored pencils in it.
Terrible light, but I wanted to show you the no-longer-functional gas pump and the snow outside.

There was quite a bit of snow in Mineral King when we arrived. Tomorrow’s post will be about that, accelerated to Thursday, because there are too many photos of Mineral King to just confine the topic to Friday’s post.

*Not the actual store, but you know what I mean.

Selling at Silver City

Silver City Store, as it looked in 1985, painted in 2018 as a commissioned oil painting. (The original pencil drawing is in a frame and as such, won’t scan properly).

Over the weekend, I took all my Mineral King themed paintings to the Silver City Store, which is where I worked in 1985 when I met Trail Guy and changed the entire direction of my life (from meandering and going nowhere to based around Mineral King.)

Sawtooth on a saw blade was commissioned by the resort and belongs to them —not for sale.

The first time I sold my art in a store was the summer of 1986, when I had prints made of my drawing of the Silver City Store. Now it is called Silver City Resort and it is much fancier.

Usually I take 6-10 paintings and some notecards to the store at the beginning of the season, and then restock throughout the summer. This year I decided to take everything all at once.

Manager Molly was very gracious in helping me fit things in. We pulled nails, pounded new ones, and scooted lots of things closer together. They have more merchandise than ever before—if you like to shop, you will definitely enjoy the store this year.

When it was all in place, I pulled out my little Canon Elph camera, and the battery was dead. I didn’t have the inferior phone camera with me, because there is no reason to take it up the hill.

So on the way home, we stopped by and I did some quick photos (had a replacement battery back at the cabin).

A gap here is good news.

Two paintings sold over the weekend!

Entering White Chief. . . I admit, this is one of my favorites and I was surprised it hung around for two years.
Mineral King Trail

It’s not a gallery with white walls, shiny floors, and lots of space, but my art does well in carefully selected stores. Silver City is the first and best place I’ve ever done business.

P.S. Silver City is 21 miles up the Mineral King Road and is 4 miles below the Mineral King valley.

In the Think Tank and Other Work Thoughts

Sort of Working

Having finished the oil painting commission, priced paintings and cards to sell at Silver City, all this while believing that I have finished enough paintings for the entire summer (possibly delusional about that), it was time to consider how to next spend my work time.

I pulled weeds at church (not work), oiled the siding on the front of the studio (sort of work), learned to use the new scanner at a minimal level (work requiring enormous patience), worked on art for the 2027 calendar (the best kind of work), and went to a county supervisor candidate meet-up where I had a conversation that led to a pencil commission (marketing work).

The requested subject, Reimer’s, to be redrawn in pencil, is here in Three Rivers. Iit will take a few photo sessions to find the right light without the parking lot full of scene-blocking cars. The customer has granted permission to show progress on the blog.

Too many generations of reproduction have severely compromised the quality of this drawing.

The original drawing is in a frame somewhere in someone’s home (I hope it isn’t stashed in a storage unit), the printshop that originally printed this on cards is out of business, and the store is under new ownership with some changes. Hence, it is time for a new drawing.

Preparing to Work

In addition, someone who hired me to edit a very long paper/potential book/article/essay something sent me photos of his garden at its peak and requested a collage type oil painting. I’ve only done collages with pencil, but I am willing to try this design approach in oil paint.

A collage in pencil, designed to combine scenes that seem disparate to the viewer unless you are the customer to whom all these places make sense.

After studying the 10 or so photos that he sent, it became apparent that my laptop screen isn’t up for the task—it’s just too small. So, I put them all on a document, turned it black and white (because my printer isn’t really capable of printing in color without cleaning the heads, running test patterns, and then replacing ink that got used up doing those tasks) and printed it out.

Next, I made a list of everything that is important to the customer. (He is very good at communicating—hence, the successful editing project.)

As I tiptoed ahead on this challenging project, I realized that this is my chance to not be stupidly unbusinesslike. Often I get so caught up in a challenge that I don’t charge for all the extra work, and I rarely remember to get a deposit. This time I let the customer know that the job is in the Think Tank and that I was attaching an invoice for $100 nonrefundable deposit for the design work. It will be applied to the painting, size to be determined.

After work I came home and cleaned up the tail and guts of a squirrel that Tucker caught, nibbled on, and left for Jackson and Pippin to finish. It was seriously disgusting, so instead of showing you that, let’s look at a pencil drawing of a completely intact squirrel.

Four Little Victories with Unpleasant Tasks

On an overcast and chilly morning with our final fire of the season in the wood stove, I sat with my laptop and tackled some unpleasant tasks.

  1. A new scanner: I went looking online to see if the one that served me well for 15 years was still available. It is not. A similar one appeared to be available, but it isn’t sold in the U S of A. So, begrudgingly, I went to the Big A and found (settled for?) a flatbed scanner made by a company called Plustek. I’m guessing that Mustek (my last scanner company) morphed into Plustek. Every piece of information available seems to indicate that it is easy to set up and will work with my outdated MacBook Pro.

2. My printer is one of those 4-way deals: print, scan, copy, and fax. (Fax?? Who does that any more besides medical offices, which I do my best to avoid?) It works as a scanner in a pinch, except that it only handles 8-1/2 x 11” documents and the lid isn’t removable for thick canvases. It is a good printer, but it uses SO MUCH INK. I always check the box for black & white copies, and somehow, the other ink cartridges run low. It is hard to buy only black, and the blue, red, and yellow cartridges appear to be multiplying in the dark while I wait yet again for another overpriced order of black ink. Rip-off.

3. An online printing company is where I get small amounts of notecards printed. In the last handful of years, suddenly they charge sales tax after I have submitted all my resale permit info. I learned that I have to resubmit the same forms, Every Year, Year After Year After Year. So tiresome. OF COURSE they don’t ever receive the email, which necessitates a “chat” or a phone call, where someone keeps reassuring me that they will look into it. The people are nice, and they are helpful, but WHY IS THIS NECESSARY, OVER AND OVER??

4. Someone asked me what other murals I have painted, and I realized that I don’t have them on my website, other than the page “What my customers are saying” or some such thing. So I spent a couple of long sessions make a new mural page, finding, organizing, and posting the photos. No dates or sizes are included. They don’t all show in full, due to my use of “galleries”, which means a cluster of photos with predetermined shapes and sizes. It was kind of cool to realize that I have that many under my belt.

Instead of all this administrative stuff, I just want to paint. Actually I just want to draw. Sure would be nice to have a secretary, administrative assistant, intern, apprentice, servant, butler, lady’s waiting maid, something.

However, then I’d have to work more to pay that person, and I wouldn’t have enough money to pay for all those ink cartridges or a new scanner.

I’ll leave it alone now.

The Hardest Part About Being an Artist (accompanied by a random selection of pencil drawings)

Anyone want to guess?

Guesses

Maybe you are thinking that it is difficult to paint according to people’s instructions (called “commissions” or “commissioned art”). That might be true for some artists, but I am not one of them. I’ve said for decades that I’d rather draw an ugly house than be a waitress.

Maybe you are thinking that it is the lack of a steady paycheck. That is probably true for artists without supportive spouses with a steady income and insurance, but that is not me.

Maybe you are thinking that it is having to approach galleries. There aren’t any for-profit galleries in Tulare County, and since Tulare County is my focus, I don’t have to approach galleries. A benefit of having stayed here my entire career, both in subject matter and in the flesh, is that galleries (all non-profit) approach me. Not boasting, just stating the facts. There is much to be said for continuity and presence and reliability and community.

What about selling? Not a problem for me, because I don’t try to “sell” to people. I help people who want my art figure out which piece or pieces will please them most. No tricky words, no persuasive speech, just helping people.

None of those things are anyone’s favorite part about being an artist. So what is the hardest part?

The answer

Pricing. All artists HATE to set prices.

Other artists tell me my prices are way too low. However, my customers gasp and have to think about whether or not to spend money on my art. (That deflates any tendencies of getting fat-headed about being known in my area.)

There is a push-and-pull between keeping prices affordable while allowing those who do the expensive and boring work of maintaining a gallery or gift shop to have a fair cut of the profits. And keeping prices affordable is a bit of smoke-and-mirrors, the old 99 or 95 trick. If keeping prices consistent, and a size comes out to the price of $225, the tendency is to call it $199 or $195. If I do that, I’ve chopped $25 off my profit, and also chopped the seller’s cut.

What if I just painted small so all the prices are under $200 in order to keep the visitors and gift shops flowing along? This is often what I do.

But if I only paint small, then my inventory will not be ready for someone who asks for a larger piece, or when a gallery approaches for a show.

Ethics

On top of all that indecisiveness, there is an important piece to pricing: no matter where someone finds my work, it must be priced the same. Website, shows, galleries, my studio, stores—no “it’s cheaper at. . .” or “I know the artist and can get her to cut me a deal.” Nope. We* keep it consistent** and ethical, and if you see my piece at a show and then think that after the show you can get it cheaper from me, go have yourself another think. Likewise, if you see a piece at a show and wait to buy it directly from me, I will write the gallery a check for their cut anyway.

Conclusion

Push-me-pull-you, that llama from Dr. Doolittle with two heads, each one pointing a different direction—that’s a good symbol of the mess in my head when setting prices.

I need some chocolate.

I painted this 5×7” oil in 2006, not too long after beginning to work in oil.

*The royal we, since it is just big Queen Me-Me around here in this little business.

**Except sometimes I mess up, especially when doing stressful pricing math.