Better Bit By Bit

Dutch iris are my favorite domestic flowers. I’ve painted them multiple times through the years.

Recently, I pulled one out of Kaweah Arts because I thought of a way to make it better. After sprucing it up, I thought you might appreciate seeing all the changes on this painting through the years.

First time

Better

Repaired and scanned:

Repaired, scanned, and fixed on the laptop to look like the actual painting:

Phooey, I think I need to replace the scanner.

Meanwhile, the painting is now looking most totally excellent (because they always looks better in person than on screens) and can be yours for $75 (plus tax if you are in California and shipping.)

Quick and Cold

This collage in pencil is of several Visalia landmarks.

The other day I had to go to Visalia (AKA Big Town) for the morning. In the afternoon, there were pressing responsibilities on the computer (scan some things, email them to folks who had requested such things, try a few more adaptations to the cover of the book I am working on (as editor and designer, not as author), and finally, I went out to paint.

Why? It was kind of cold out there, maybe 50°. That should be no excuse. I went out to paint, because incomplete paintings don’t sell. I had been studying my photos of Three Rivers the previous evening, thinking about sales, thinking about what I haven’t painted in awhile, and thinking about the local businesses who sell my paintings. There are a few new things I want to try.

No, it wasn’t as cold as this but I thought you might enjoy this pencil drawing of the Pear Lake Ski Hut.

Try? Yeah, as in “can I do a good job?” and “will this sell?”

Most of my current customers are visitors, travelers passing through Three Rivers. They want something indicative of their visit, preferably on the lower end of the price spectrum, small enough to fit into luggage and small enough to not skew their home decor.

Enough bloviating.

First I looked at the unfinished pieces.

While briefly considering what was necessary for completion, I felt a cold breeze on the back of my neck and realized I didn’t want to sit there while concentrating on details.

Instead, I chose to do something quick. Some things quick. Some quick things.

Never mind.

Choosing the photos, choosing the sizes, digging the canvases out of the supply shelves, assigning inventory numbers, attaching hanging hardware, and slapping on a first thin layer.

OUTTA HERE! Back to the house by the woodstove. THANK YOU, TRAIL GUY for keeping the home fires burning.

Selling While Acting Semi-Retired

You may have noticed that I have been lollygagging quite a bit this year. I remember my dad describing himself as “semi-retired” when he was the age I am now. I think that is beginning to describe me. Go for a walk, hang out with some friends, organize some stuff, do a freebie job at church, organize some more stuff, do some errands… What? me work? maybe later… I’m busy.

However, due to the diligence of Stem & Stone along with Kaweah Arts, and a long-time reputation, there have been a few sales in the last several months. These are the ones I have remembered to keep track of.

This is probably the last time I will paint the Kaweah Post Office. It has been closed for several years, and it took several years for this painting to find a buyer.

I think these are the Sequoia Giganteas that was sold by Stem & Stone. If I forget to ask the seller for the inventory number, then I get confused as to which trees have sold. These 3 were actually very small: 4×12”, but I can’t make them proportionately small here on the blog.

I showed you these two while they were in progress. The first was 6×18”, painted for general inventory and the other 12×36”, a commission. I did the first as an experiment to see how it would work; the second one has more details as requested by the customer.

I don’t remember the circumstances of the sale of this one, titled Hiking Mineral King.

This 6×12″ was fun. I titled it Big Tree, Little Cow.

A newish cabin owner in Wilsonia discovered my book The Cabins of Wilsonia and was thrilled to find that the original drawing of her cabin was still available.

Then she discovered my website and found another pencil drawing to go with her cabin.

These sold last fall but I haven’t done a Sold post since last summer.

I thought that nothing was selling except notecards, but I was wrong. Maybe I should go back to the easels and stop with the lollygagging around. I can always put down my brushes and head out to pull weeds or take a walk or read a book (THANK YOU, READER/FRIEND LAURIE FOR ALL THE BOOK SUGGESTIONS!) while the paint is drying.

Using Tech with a Pencil Drawing

When one of my drawing students or I finish a drawing, we often like to get it reproduced as prints, notecards, for a business card or a brochure, in a portfolio of work. . . so many potential uses!

Back in the olden days, pencil was very difficult to reproduce either on a copy machine or a printing press. Now we have computers, which everyone knows can solve all the world’s problems.

Fall down laughing.

Now, with a scanner and Photoshop Elements (AKA Photoshop Jr.), I am able to prepare pencil drawings for reproduction. (This is a service I provide free of charge for my drawing students but I do charge customers because it can be a somewhat lengthy process.)

BEFORE

AFTER

Prolly time to buy a new scanner because mine is adding colors that do not belong. Ugh, shopping for tech products: the scanner quit working when I updated my laptop in 2017 (to a 2015 model), so I have to keep my old laptop in order to use it. The pieces and products and devices continue to multiply.

P.S. THANK YOU, LOU, FOR ALLOWING ME TO SHOW OFF YOUR FANTASTIC PENCIL DRAWING OF MORO ROCK IN SEQUOIA NATIONAL PARK!

Back to Buckling Down

Here is the afternoon’s painting session after a morning of exploring around Lake Kaweah. I’m easing into the production of Mineral King paintings, with the workshop doors open to the greenery, flowers, cats, and sounds of leaf blowers, chain saws, a distant donkey, and the occasional vehicle. March is a month full of distractions and temptations to lollygag. However, summer is coming and incomplete paintings will not sell.

It is efficient to paint the same scenes at the same time since the colors are mixed on the palette. Because this is the most popular scene to sell at Silver City, I paint it in multiple sizes and shapes, and at different times of day and in different parts of the summer season.

I was pleased to be able to finish these—see the signatures? The previous painting session did not yield anything that was ready to be signed. If I can get those 3 plus 2 from an earlier session detailed and signed, then I’ll be over halfway to completing the ten paintings.

Why ten? With the ones that remain from last year, this is a total of about 15 paintings. Silver City Store sells anywhere from ten to twenty paintings for me each summer. I don’t want to have too much inventory left at the end of summer. So I keep track as paintings sell, then paint more of the popular subjects that have sold out.

It’s all a guessing game, supplemented with a little bit of intuition and experience. That’s the business of art.

In case you have forgotten:

I use pencils, oil paint, and murals to make art that you can understand of places and things you love for prices that won’t scare you.

Just thinking about inspiration

Just outside the gallery/museum where I teach weekly drawing lessons.

People love to ask artists what inspires them. This is kind of annoying, because generally speaking, artists just love to make their art, not sit around contemplating the reasons. An artist who helped me get going in oils said that what inspired him were the bills in his PO box. I’ve occasionally pondered the question of inspiration, and all I can ever come up with is so mundane, predictable, commonplace, and ordinary that it embarrasses me to admit such a thing.

a morning walk

And the answer is. . . . BEAUTY.

The same walk. . . these are fiddlenecks

Well, duh. Of course I have to surround it with something a little more detailed, something to make it a bit more challenging, because I came here to earn a living. I am looking for the beauty of Tulare County, this poor, uneducated, rural, overlooked place in the middle of California. We do not have the Golden Gate Bridge, Hollyweird, the beach, Lake Tahoe or Death Valley. But we do have Mt. Whitney, sequoia trees, the largest oaks, the best citrus, more dairy than the entire state of Wisconsin and an enormous variety of agriculture. So, I continue to look for the beauty here in Tulare County.

A little life remains in this surprise bouquet, salvaged by the oh-so-thoughtful Trail Guy from flowers knocked over by rain.

Why? To generate pride (the good kind, not the sinful kind) in those of us who wonder what holds us here (No Trader Joe’s?? Who can withstand this sort of deprivation?) And, of course, to sell. We get a million or so folks (nope, haven’t looked up the numbers) passing through Three Rivers on their way to The Park (AKA Sequoia National Park) every year.

Sitting at a long traffic light on the drive home. Those are orange trees, in case you were wondering. And why not enjoy the sunset instead of being frustrated by the wait? There are only 3 traffic lights on my weekly commute, and I can actually skip all of them by choosing less direct routes.

That’s it, that’s all. Beauty inspires me. God is the creator, I am the imitator. And sales, because without those, I might have to get a real job, and then I wouldn’t have as much time to appreciate beauty.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Dad. You would have been 94, and although other family members have that longevity, it ain’t pretty.

Planning Session for Summer Selling Season

Deciding what to paint for the Silver City Store this coming summer felt like a daunting task. There is no excuse for procrastination, and the better I plan, the better the sales. So, suck it up, Buttercup.

The first step in planning is to look at the available Mineral King paintings. (For my out-of-the-area readers, Mineral King is a beautiful alpine valley in Sequoia National Park; each summer I sell art 4 miles below the valley at a resort in a little cabin community called “Silver City”.)

It also involves evaluating how many paintings sold, both by subject and by size. I am painting to satisfy a clientele, rather than just doing whatever “moves” me. Thank goodness it is all very beautiful.

This planning part isn’t so beautiful. It’s methodical, tedious, and would be easier if I had a crystal ball. Instead, I have records, intuition, common sense, and piles and piles of photos, both the paper variety and on the laptop.

It is helpful to line them out by subject and size.

It is also helpful to take a break and walk somewhere. (No powerlines in Mineral King or Silver City to clutter the views up there, because it is remote, the Land of No Electricity.)

Rosemary in bloom. . . so far this year, February has been impersonating spring.

Now I have ten new paintings to produce, ranging in size from 6×6” to 8×16” and 10×10”.

I’ve attached hanging hardware and assigned inventory numbers. Next I need to give them titles, such as “Sawtooth #209”.

Not really; I think it is only somewhere in the 60s.

Finally Painting Sequoias Again

After a couple of weeks of messing around, I finally planted my feet in front of the easels to complete these three Sequoia paintings.

First, I dabbled on this one day, and then said, “Never mind, I’d rather [walk] [pull weeds] [go to the library] [anything else]”.

I girded my loins, and returned to the easels on another day. Can you tell which one is finished among these three?

Now two are finished, on the face anyway.

The light is beginning to wane, but all three are now finished on their faces.

The edges remained. It is a good way to use up the rest of the paint, and I hold them in my hand and rotate them around, trying to not end up wearing any paint. Finally, I laid them flat to dry.

The next oil painting task is to decide what to paint for the Silver City Store. Summer is like Christmas—we KNOW when it is coming, there is no excuse for procrastination, and there is plenty of time to prepare without getting jammed up against the calendar.

Maybe in one of those avoidance activities, I can engage in some deep thought to figure out why I was so reluctant to work on these paintings, which sell steadily at two local art stores/gift shops.*

Then since I was on a roll with Sequoia Trees, I got this panel set up in the sunshine to recoat the sky because that knothole made a weird appearance.

*Kaweah Arts and Stem & Stone

Thoughts on Internship

My Intern

Today I am painting, progressing on the mural on the Ivanhoe library. I am writing this post before I have painted today, thinking ahead.

Each day I work on the mural, there are multiple decisions to make. In the past, when I’d get a little stuck, I’d pick a somewhat mindless task, such as taping off an area or applying a base coat. Since having Intern to help, I save those tasks for him.

Sometimes I invite him to step back with me to look at the whole picture. I ask him what he sees, we discuss the next steps, and often I ask him which task he thinks ought to come next. I ask him for 2 reasons: (1) to help him understand the thought necessary in the process of creating such a massive painting and (2) sometimes I have “decision fatigue”, which might be a euphemism for mental laziness.

In anticipation of today’s work, I made a list of the next easy tasks, and in the process, I realized that his role as an active intern on this mural might reach an end today. What remains are tight detailing: the man on the ladder, some smudgepots, the rooster, tighter lettering, the auditorium, a wind machine, and perhaps a couple of surprises.

I wonder if he will still want to hang around while I work on these things. He might, he might not. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Someone Else’s Thoughts on Internships or Apprenticeships

The next two paragraphs are taken from Eric Rhoads, the prolific painter, writer, workshop and convention coordinator and leader—the man who led the weeklong plein air retreat in Monterey that I attended in October 2024.

“. . .that’s exactly how the masters worked. Apprentices would paint backgrounds, grind pigments, even paint entire sections of ‘the master’s’ work. Collaboration wasn’t a buzzword; it was how things got done. Raphael had an entire workshop of apprentices painting from his designs. Was it still “his” work? The Renaissance said yes. Our modern obsession with individual authorship would have confused them.

When I let those kids paint on my canvas, I wasn’t risking ruining it. I was enacting a centuries-old tradition. And more importantly, I was doing what those Renaissance masters did: passing it on. Because here’s the secret they knew and we’ve forgotten — art isn’t about the final product. It’s about the transformation that happens in the making. —From Eric Rhoads

In case you were curious, I kept track of Intern’s hours and paid him last week. I will pay him for his remaining hours of working, but not if he chooses to simply observe. He was shocked by the check, slightly insulted when I asked him if he knew what to do with a check, and felt unworthy, as if he owed me something in return.

I reminded him that he gave me some hours of his life, I gave him the equivalent of green pieces of paper with dead presidents’ faces on it in exchange, and we were even.

I Wonder

How many more Fridays will it take to complete this? Should Intern’s name go on the mural? Will I be able to do all those details without his excellent eye and honest input? Will I be able to help him find a steady job? Will he go on to paint a mural of his own? (He is into videography more than 2-dimensional art.)

Look how far we’ve come in ten days of painting!

The end of Day One:

The end of Day Ten:

Enough bloviating for today. Come back Monday to see how close we are to the end of this most satisfying project.

Oil Paintings on the Move

Sales were slow this December. Actually, sales of oil paintings were slow all fall, beginning with the show in Tulare called “Around Here”, where no paintings and six pencil drawings sold.

However, during the fall season, a few paintings did move. These first two sold through Kaweah Arts, located in The Dome in Three Rivers.

The other two were commissioned paintings, neither one on a fast track, and both recently delivered into the hands of happy customers.

Look at this painting, drying in the house, and drying outside by the wood stack.

Now look at how much better it photographed in the sunshine than when it was overcast.

I drove this next painting to the customers rather than shipping it. It was a rare and wonderful chance to visit with them. They ordered it while living out of the country, and I delivered it when they were prepping their old house to sell so they can move to another state.

The painting caused a few tears, since I apparently (by the grace of God) did manage to paint the right person.

These customers requested another painting to take as they move to a home with many walls, in a place that has no Mineral King and no sequoia trees. I brought two more paintings to show them, and they chose this one.

I was pleased to put this in their hands, and happy that I had it long enough to make some improvements. If a painting doesn’t sell, I evaluate it carefully to find ways to make it better. This one, Sunny Sequoias, provided me with several opportunities for improvement.

And although it seemed like a slow season for sales, it wasn’t really. Just different. Not complaining, just explaining. All Most of my needs are met (but I need to find a different host company for my website), and most of my wants (does anyone know if it is possible to convert an automatic transmission to a standard?? OF COURSE IT ISN’T! I still miss Fernando, but recognize and appreciate the superiority of Momscar.)