Five steps closer to completing a new painting of the classic Mineral King view, but still about 60 steps from actual completion.
Remember this?
It is 30″ high, and I can’t reach the top very well. That’s okay, because it is movable.
The cabin is too wide.
Better.
I’m not trying to be exactly true to the photo. I am trying to make it look believable, and after looking at it for 39 years, drawing it about a dozen times in pencil and painting it at least 64 times*, I can recognize when things aren’t quite right.
However, I am making free with the locations of the rocks in the river.
Now there is a base coat on almost everything. Maybe two more layers will do the trick: one to fill out and finish covering the shapes and another to detail it. But then I’ll have to detail it more. And then it will need more correcting. After I show it to my most discerning critics, I’ll need to correct it even further. (See? 60 more steps ahead)
Changing the sizes, the lighting, the cropping—these things keep me interested when I continue to paint the same scenes over and over.
*Really! I counted my photos of the completed paintings, so I know this is true, and there might even be more that I didn’t photograph. Curious? Here they are up through 2016, when the count was at 32.
More Farewell Gap Mineral King Oil Paintings
Mineral King Oil Paintings, Continued
Still Oil Painting in Mineral King
And Yet More Mineral King Oil Paintings
4 Comments
OK, I’ll grant you this is the most popular/iconic Mineral King view, but I’m partial to what is probably the second most popular/iconic view. And I have a Jana Botkin Original of that view!
P.S. I could have guessed the subject in the very first step you posted, but I guess that’s no surprise, there!
Sharon, I expected you to recognize that mess immediately, and you did not disappoint!
It’s my goal in life not to disappoint, and most of the time I succeed! The talent comes from starting with “that mess” and turning it into a beautiful painting, something that YOU do not disappoint!
Aw shucks. The harder I work, the more talented I become. (Praise God from whom all blessings flow. . .)
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