Category: Thoughts

Things I’m learning in Artworld.

Best or Worst Critic?

“You are your own worst critic” is something I hear from time to time. That is actually a positive trait, because who else is going to be completely honest to help me improve my work?

Today’s post is one to help me think about how to make this painting be the best possible. This painting is a conglomeration of a stack of many photos, in an attempt to make it the most colorful that I can.

These are my thoughts as I study the painting:

The two pomegranates look good, which makes sense because I’ve painted many pomegranates.
The orange needs a bit more brightening.
The tangerine is a good idea, but doesn’t look quite right; maybe it is Sumo, maybe a mineola tangelo. (Are those even grown anymore?)
The hidden plum is a little weird with that highlight–maybe it should just go dark.
The upper left plum looks almost finished, only lacking some highlighting on the left side.
The grapes need more variety in their color, along with highlights on the left edges.
The lemon needs better color, highlights on the left, detail in the stem. (I took away the shading from a previous iteration because the light source was on the wrong side.)
The persimmon looks too red here, but that might be the way it photographed. Worth checking. It needs detail in the green thingie, called a “sepal”, and the green is wrong.
Both pears need detail; the yellow one has been shrunk and only has a base coat, and the green one lost its freckles.
The peach needs fuzz and it needs those ghost grapes to get buried.
It won’t take long to finish the apple.
The background needs the glow to be more subtle so it doesn’t look like a halo around the plum and grapes.

Good thing there is no deadline on this. It’s a great exercise in making things up and keeping them believable. It is also a great exercise in patience, in reining in my natural bent to git-‘er-dun. So much in life is better when we see it as an opportunity to learn rather than a nuisance.

Here you can see I improved the background, light on the upper plum and grapes, the tangerine, persimmon sepal, the flower ends of the pomegranates (in spite of thinking they were finished), the green apple. Of course, it is wet and shiny so doesn’t photograph well.

Perhaps I am my own best critic, rather than worst critic?

custom art oil painting

Old Drawing Leads to Family Reunion

This blog post is just a short report on a personal topic. Trail Guy and I attended a 99th birthday party for his great uncle. The invitation came over the phone, so I didn’t hear the address or the time. I knew Great Uncle lived next door to a friend’s house, which I drew a number of years ago, figuring that Trail Guy had the address in his head or written somewhere.

He asked me what time we needed to leave because I wanted to do two errands while we were down the hill. I thought that because it was a lunch party that it was at noon, so I did some calculating, built in a little buffer, and said “quarter to eleven”.

After the second errand, he said, “Now what do you want to do?” I said, “We have the right amount of time to find the house, because we don’t know which side of our friend they live on”. Indeed, more than plenty, because the party was at one! Oops.

I thought he had the address, and he thought I knew the time.

So we went to CACHE and spent some time looking at the exhibits and the art.

Drawn so long ago that the landscaping was different. (2008)

When we decided to head toward the party, I followed my memory to the house I had drawn. Alas, it had been 15 years, and the signature birch trees which were to be my landmark were nowhere to be seen. We drove around the block, and then parked near the house that I was fairly certain was the right one. (Silly me, all that assuming, and I even didn’t look at the drawing first either—simply relied on memory). A neighbor came out on one side and asked if we were lost. Turns out that we weren’t lost after all; the party house was on the other side of the house that I remembered. By then, all we had to do was watch to see where cars pulled up with people we knew.

Great Uncle’s wife of perhaps 10 years read a sweet poem she wrote, and then Great Uncle recited a poem he wrote. What a story: engaged, then broke up because he didn’t want to leave a fiancé behind when he served in WWII. They married other people, and when both were widowed, they reunited and finally got married.

This photo was completely unposed and does not do justice to this handsome couple.

After the toasts and poetry, Trail Guy and I joined up with his favorite cousin outside. Favorite Cousin’s son had driven his mom and her husband to the reunion. He and I sat on the edge of the pool with our feet in the cold water and got acquainted. He was a delight to talk with! He said something profound, that first he attributed to Banksy, and then after looking it up (EVERYONE has a phone), we decided his version was clearer and simpler.

Everyone wants to be an artist, but no one wants to learn to draw.
-Cousin Jake

P.S. Happy Birthday, Laurie!

pencil drawing

Eleven New Things Learned in October

Long month; many new ideas, thoughts, trivia, and items of interest for you.

Old coffee grounds do NOT act as fertilizer; instead, the caffeine (yes, even in used grounds) acts as an herbicide. (I read this in a science magazine.) This could explain the poor growth in the planting bed by my front porch. . . 24 years of using an herbicide instead of fertilizer. . . oy vey.

2. The creature that I was certain is a vole is almost certainly a gopher, according to Trail Guy. None of the animal reference books at the cabin have gophers in them, so how was I to know? By asking Trail Guy instead of consulting the books, of course.

3. Have you heard the saying “Someone got a wild hair” to describe random or risky behavior? Turns out that the saying is “wild hare”; I wonder why an untamed rabbit causes people to go rogue.

Reading Rabbit is an educated bunny, not to be confused with a wild hare.

4. Did you know that very few people value their hubcaps? I’m certain there must be a study, a poll, or a survey that confirms this. I have sent photos of the found hubcaps to the place where Mineral King folks get their news, and NO ONE CARES. They recently went into the trash.

5. A friend of mine is frugal almost to the point of absurdity; I have learned many things from her through the years. (The Queen of Cheapa) A recent adventure in frugality was fixing her own tooth when a crown fell off. She bought dental cement online, rinsed with peroxide, dried the tooth, and reapplied her own crown. I wonder how long it will last; if I hear more, I will include it on another Learned List for you.

6. Enzyme cleaners in tablet form for contact lenses have become impossible to find. ‘Tis a mystery.

7. Everything is a process. Want insurance? Start making phone calls, working through “phone trees”, leaving messages, waiting. Want to do something with your phone? Start making phone calls, leaving messages, listening to robots lying to you about “your call is very important to us”. Need a medical appointment? Be prepared to be on hold, to hear multiple reassuring messages about how much “we care about your health”, and then plan on getting multiple phone calls to “preregister”, to “verify”, to “confirm”, and to “prepare”. My opinion is that everyone is overloaded with precautions that waste everyone’s time, all in the hopes of not getting sued. It all comes down to lawyers and insurance. Further, big companies are difficult to deal with.

8. If you switch cell phone providers, you have to get a A. transfer PIN, B. account number (which account #??), C. unlock your phone from the previous provider. I emboldened C because the new provider neglected to mention this and many hours were wasted on the phone with the new provider trying to establish the reason for the new phone’s inability to work. The phones are still locked after more wasted time with the old provider, our old nemesis Huge & Rude (and incomprehensible).(See #7 and then find our new vocabulary word on #10)

9. The Clover Creek Bridge in Sequoia National Park was NOT built by the Civilian Conservation Corps; it was built by a construction company before the CCCs came into the Park. Additionally there is another one like it that most people just fly over without actually seeing: the Marble Fork Bridge (the creek after it runs through Lodgepole campground). You can learn more about these bridges on Tulare County Treasures.

10. A friend sent me this most excellent new word: “ineptocracy”. (see item #7) Look at the definition, and see if you can relate: Ineptocracy (in-ep-toc’-ra-cy) – a system of government where the least capable to lead, are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.

11. Here is a little gift of a link to a very touching story on Tim Cotton Writes: The Last Impala.

Perhaps you could use a peaceful seasonal image after all that information. I am happy to oblige.

Ten New Things Learned in September

There is a common thread running through this month’s list. You will see what I’ve been focusing on learning lately.

Our front yard has a creature in it. It’s a vole. I’ve never seen one of those before.

2. A friend showed us these inflatable solar lights from REI. Sounds like a great way to not use propane at the cabin, but the lights themselves run from about $30-$50, depending on the size. Inflatable!?!

3. Glucose Revolution by Jessie Inchauspé is a book that has inspired me to change the way I eat. It is well-researched, well-written, and makes a ton of sense. Here it is on ThriftBooks (I got my copy at the library).

4. CACHE is starting a new quest to gather money to have longer hours. Their attempts to secure grants have been unsuccessful, so they will be asking 300 people to give $100/year for two years in order to be open more hours. This makes much more sense to me: the local people who care will be more involved if they feel responsible for helping to keep it running. You should see the museum now—it is fabulous, nothing like the normal small town history museums! CACHE = Center for Arts, Culture, & History, Exeter, and their website is here: CACHE

5. I learned how to transfer a pattern from a picture on the computer to a life-size outline on a wall.

6. Xylitol is a zero calorie sweetener made from the bark of birch trees. (Birch trees?? Who figured this out?) It is supposed to work on a 1:1 exchange with sugar in baking (too expensive for me!), and the reviews are mixed. Glucose Revolution says it might still spike your glucose (how?? why??); other sources say it is a great substitute without side effects. I think it tastes better than stevia (but I still prefer real sugar, so there!)

7. Monk fruit (what in the world?) is the favored non-sugar sweetener these days. I haven’t tried it yet.

8. Currants are difficult to pick, and when you run them through a juicer, they make orange goo rather than juice. If you want to make jelly, pick way way way more than you think you need, boil them awhile, then mash them in a colander for a long time to let the juice appear. Or, you can dig a hole in your garden and bury the entire mess.

9. Did you know that buffalo are classified as bovines? I didn’t know either, until they were listed as possible subjects to enter into the current exhibit at CACHE, called “A Bovine State of Mind”.

10. I heard somewhere that only 18% of Americans now attend church regularly. I’m not sure how “regularly” is actually defined here; I go native/rogue/heathen in the summer, and then attend regularly when the cabin is closed for the year. I love my church.

Whatever Happened to. . .

A follow-up on nine topics mentioned in previous posts.

Cabin Life, Chapter Twenty-two (Finale)

Cabin Life: Final Thoughts

Someone’s Colorado cabin –definitely not small, rustic or rude

This is a backcountry cabin somewhere in Montana.

This rest of this post features drawings of Wilsonia cabins, where I spent 4 summers learning about that cabin community and discovering many common themes to the Mineral King community.

There are three distinct parts to cabin-ness:

The building itself – small, rustic, basic, simple, often without electronic amenities. (But wait! What about the cabin pictured above?)
The setting – rural, semi-secluded, in the mountains, taking an effort to get to (But wait! Have you ever been up Highway 180 to Wilsonia? And do these cabins look semi-secluded to you?)

A Wilsonia road

A Wilsonia neighborhood

The culture—slower, focused on people instead of technology; a place to play, recreate and relax, mostly outside; a place where meals and fireplaces become events in and of themselves; returning to nostalgic pastimes either of our youth or of some idealized youth of our parents and grandparents.

Outdoor dining is a big part of cabin life.

Napping is a regular method of relaxing at a cabin.

See? Outdoor dining area

Even outdoor cooking!

Fireplaces are a huge part of cabin culture.

Eat and run??

It seems that the culture part is the strongest determining factor of cabin life. Some of our cabin neighbors gathered in another location for several summers, due to illness of one of their group. One of them told me, “We do Mineral King things in Seattle, and Mineral King is present with us there.” (I probably paraphrased it beyond all recognition – Forgive me, Sawtooth Six!)

Thus, we conclude our 2023 series on Cabin Life. (unless I think of something else)

P.S. Most of the drawings in this post are part of the book The Cabins of Wilsonia, available here.

P.P.S. I can draw your cabin because. . .

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

cabin drawings cabin life cabin pencil drawings Mineral King pencil drawings Wilsonia

Cabin Life, Chapter Twenty-one

Thoughts on Cabins from a friend

A dear friend of many years, Natalie, sent these thoughts, titled “What a Cabin Means to Me”. (Nat, I did a tiny bit of editing – hope it clarifies rather than changes your intent.)

Secluded from the general public and hard to get to

In the mountains

Small and rustic, having only basic amenities, and no room for isolation.

Not a second home, but more of a make-do-and-relax kind of place where there is no television or phone service. A place where you interact with family and friends by sharing meals, playing cards and other games, sitting by a fire, hiking, and just cherishing the quietness of the outdoors.

Once again, mountains, small, rustic, games, firesides, food, outdoors, friends and family appear. I think Natalie’s ideal cabin would separate her family from outside influences, causing togetherness among themselves. This is a theme I found multiple times. . . a desire to unplug and simplify in order to focus on the ones who are most precious.

Our Mineral King cabin is definitely a cabin but varies from Natalie’s thorough and excellent definition in several ways.

It is a second home to us, but not in the sense of a home with all the luxuries you may be accustomed to (our first home is purposely lacking a dishwasher, microwave, “smart” gadgets, garbage disposal or heated towel racks; we’re just fine, but thanks for your concern).
The cabin no longer has a telephone, but we borrow the neighbors’ to check our messages on the home answering machine.
Neither one of us likes to play games; in the evenings we listen to the radio, Trail Guy reads out-of-date newspapers that friends bring up to him, I read library books and knit.

There is no single definition of “cabin”, but there is a feel to a place that makes it a cabin. I will share a few more ideas about it tomorrow. Then, maybe I will be finished with this topic. (No promises, because after all, my business is called Cabin Art.)

So, according to Natalie, a cabin is a small, poorly-constructed, primitive, one-story hut in the woods where everyday life is distant, and we gather to laugh with family and play board games while a fire keeps us warm. (If you have a giant log mansion on a lake somewhere, then you will have to edit this description to fit your idea of what constitutes “cabin”.)

P.S. I can draw your cabin because. . .

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

Mineral King

Cabin Life, Chapter Twenty

Mineral King Cabin Community

Mineral King cabin folks come from cities, suburbs, small towns and out in the country; we live in mansions, estates, apartments, and even a few normal houses. We are (or were) artists, bankers, equipment operators, janitors, teachers, farmers, administrative assistants, engineers, retirees, dental hygienists, sheriffs, lawyers, doctors, cowboys, builders, day care workers, musicians, optometrists, veterinary assistants, physical therapists, moms, Park employees, physician’s assistants, and those are just the first ones that come to mind. We come from Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Virginia, New York, Hawaii, Florida, South Dakota, and Egypt. (And more places that I can’t remember. . .)

Our Mineral King cabins, AKA “small, poorly constructed huts in the woods”, are great equalizers.

Every one of us, regardless of our backgrounds, livelihoods, economic, educational or political status, is thrilled to have a small, poorly constructed hut in the woods without electricity. Every cabin has a barely adequate kitchen, a laughably tiny (or no) bathroom, maybe two, one, even no bedrooms.

Every single cabin user has to figure out how to deal with unreliable water, peculiar propane appliances, old stuff that may or may not work, and the definite lack of a maintenance department, hardware or grocery store. There is a terrible road to get there, rodents, spiders and other wildlife that may or may not be appreciated, and all sorts of unexpected situations. (Who left this chair and what happened to my flashlight?? Does anyone have any birthday candles? What’s wrong with this place that has no outlets? Are you serious that I cannot blow-dry my hair?)

Every single cabin that is owned by multiple families has its conflicts, whether decorating, cleaning, maintaining, or scheduling. The cabins without partnerships have to bear all the expenses, decisions, maintenance and cleaning without benefit of sharing the load.

Whether folks have complicated lives in fancy places or plainer lives in simpler places, all view a cabin as a mixed blessing: a family tradition, a repository of memories, and a bit of an inconvenience, but still a huge treat, their own treasured shabby shack in the mountains.

We have fought together against bureaucracy, helped one another, hiked together, learned one another’s family trees, and through it all we have built multi-generational friendships weekend upon weekend, year after year after decade after decade. And I am just a newcomer. . .

P.S. I can draw your cabin (or house or barn or garage or shed or hut or cottage or mansion) because. . .

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

cabin life Mineral King

Cabin Life, Chapter Nineteen

What is a Cabin?

You may have noticed that some posts about art are beginning to be regular interruptions to our series called “Cabin Life”. My art business is waking back up after a semi-comatose summer.

So, let’s wrap up this topic with some final posts. These are a rerun from 2018, but maybe you have slept since then, or maybe you didn’t read my blog back then.

What is a Cabin?

In 1986 I married into a Mineral King cabin. I’d always wanted either a cabin or a beach house. Here in Tulare County, cabins are more available and accessible than beach houses. It has worked out well, even to the point that my art business is called Cabin Art. (Or Cabinart. . . for a Typo-Psycho, I am awfully ambivalent about the spelling of this invented word.)

One would think that I would know how to define the word “cabin”. Alas, one would be wrong about that!

We had an old dictionary at the cabin, so I looked up “cabin”. The 3rd definition said, “A small, rude hut”. Clearly the word “rude” has changed in meaning since the dictionary was published in 1935. I looked up “rude” and saw “Poorly constructed”.

Alrighty, then. A cabin is a small, poorly constructed hut.

But is it?

I looked up “cabin” on my Mac. The dictionary on my computer has fairly useless definitions as far as our discussion is concerned.

Cabin may refer to:

Beach cabin, a small wooden hut on a beach
Log cabin, a house built from logs
Chalet, a wooden mountain house with a sloping roof
Small remote mansion (Western Canada)
Small, free-standing structures that serve as individual lodging spaces of a motel
Cottage, a small house

We called this The Beach House while growing up; never once did the word “cabin” enter our little skulls.

Forget that. Where’s my real Webster’s dictionary?? Mine was published in 2004 rather than 1935. Oh good grief, look at this: “A small, simple, one-story house.”

That’s it? Au contraire! (Is that how you say “You are wrong” in French?)

In 2018, a few folks checked in with their thoughts on what a cabin is. One suggested “primitive”; another said a place to get away from every day life; someone else put forth the idea that a cabin is a state of mind. “Non-fancy” is a good description, and another added gave a description of an ideal cabin. She used the word “spare”, which could mean an extra home or it could mean without clutter. (I’ve seen some pretty cluttered cabins, and I have lived in a cabin when it was my only place of residence.)

To be continued. . . (and your thoughts are welcome!)

P.S. I can draw your cabin (or house) because. . .

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

cabin life

Ten Items Learned in August

August is a long month, and the new information kept coming, so instead of the usual 7 or 8 items, this month there are 10: Elvis, a couple of books, some poems, and other fascinating facts for you!

Elvis was naturally blond but he dyed his hair black. I read this in Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Legends, which I didn’t finish because A. I don’t have an interest in celebrities and B. it was very depressing. (Why did I start it? Just normal curiosity, which often leads me to check out books that I don’t finish.)
Trails develop cracks. When the cracks are lateral (running the length of the trail), it means the ground was super saturated and the snow weight was substantial. Repairing such cracks before the trail sloughs away requires some real hard work.
A1C. Ick. Would prefer not to know. Would prefer to live on ice cream. However, I am a responsible adult and have been diligently paying attention to what I consume in order to lower that number before it becomes a problem. Essentially, forgoing sweets simply makes me feel both righteous and perpetually dissatisfied.
The Art of Frugal Hedonism is a fun book, written by two Australians. I didn’t finish this one either, but enjoyed the turn of phrase. (Phooey, wish I had copied a few down to share with you.)
I helped a friend get an extremely heavy piece of black oak for his wordworking hobby. He used some of it to make this turned wooden bowl for me. It is about 6″ in diameter, maybe even 8″. It is perfect to hold my Very Important Items at the cabin.*
That slanted side pocket on Carhartt pants is so that things won’t fall out when you sit down. The tall part of the slant is in the back.
Two little poems about the size of Texas: The sun has riz/The sun has set/And here we is/
In Texas yet!
—
Oh, the distances in Texas aren’t so very far.
We’ve driven from border to border and only wore out one car!
Did you know there is a trend called “restocking“? It is people repackaging consumable items into pretty containers and arranging everything to be aesthetically pleasing in their pantries, refrigerators, linen closets, etc. Then they film themselves doing this along with the results and post it online. WHY??? Do they expect to get rich and famous? Maybe they ought to learn to do something useful instead, real work, like plumbing or welding.
105.5 FM is called The Legend and plays classic country music. (I cannot define “classic” but am guessing it means music older than about 10 years, or is it 20. . .?) I think it is based in Fresno. You can play “name that tune”, or “name that artist”, but they don’t seem to have a real DJ to tell you what you have heard or are about to hear.
At a recent “happy hour” gathering, some friends wanted to supply me with something non-alcoholic to drink (not because I was getting sloppy, but because I don’t drink alcohol). They introduced me to this stuff: Lagunitas Hoppy Refresher. It wasn’t bad; it fits right there with all those sparkly nothing drinks like La Croix.