Whoa. That was a sprint. Three new orange oil paintings in a week’s time, begun and completed.
It is a privilege to be thought of when local businesses have Art Emergencies; it is a thrill to be able to handle those situations. I’m very happy to be able to help, and particularly happy to help out in ag and especially in citrus.
Lovies,
Your happy orange painter
It’s my blog, I’m 58 and I can make up words if I want to. Any questions?
Oh. What does “oranging” mean?
It means painting oranges, although I was just painting greens that day. Because this commission job was for 3 oil paintings in 2 weeks, I had to plan the most efficient method of delivering mostly dry paintings.
Day one: get the first layer down, all the canvas covered, the basic shapes and colors in place and the edges with one coat.
Day two: Perfect the background greens so that on. . .
Day three: sign on the green area after perfecting the orange area. Finally, put a second layer on the edges, which may or may not show. I don’t know what the framer has in mind and won’t get to see the final product.
This gives the paintings a week to dry. Would have been better to know about this job sooner, both for more time to work and also for summer’s heat, which makes for quicker drying. They might be a little tacky (in the tactile sense of the word, not the quality of the job.) But, a little pressure is sometimes a good catalyst for action.
Speaking of Samson, he is pretty tired. He’s been working the night shift lately.
Two weeks to paint three oranges, but really, only one because of a planned 2 days off and because of drying time.
No problem. . . just get outta my way! They don’t have to be truly identical, because each one will end up in a different home.
That sounded weird. If they were all in the same home, they really wouldn’t have to be identical. Never mind.
They will all be presented at the same time, so they need to be close. That way, no one says, “But I like his better!”
This is how it looked over the course of Day One at the easels.
The last step of Day One was painting layer #1 on the edges. When I return to the project in two days, they will be dry enough to put on the next layer. The second day of painting will be when I perfect all the details.
Two days isn’t some formula; it is because I teach drawing lessons on the second day and have a prescheduled appointment on the third. On day four I can continue.
They most certainly need more work. . .
A yearly customer emailed me to ask for a painting she saw on my website, but she didn’t just want that painting. She wanted four of that painting.
Well, oops. My paintings don’t get reproduced by machines; my paintings get reproduced by a paintbrush in my hand.
But wait! There’s more! She wanted them in two weeks time.
Ahem. I paint in oils. They take awhile to dry (unless it is July or August). This could be a tricky assignment.
First, I found the original painting and got in touch with the gallery showing it to set it aside for me to retrieve. This meant that I had to paint “only” three. That helps.
Second, did I even have blank canvases the right size? Yeppers, I did.
I know, you are just dying to see what painting she wants.
Tomorrow, I’ll show you what happens next.
I was working on the Sawtooth oil painting. This is the first time I had painted in a few weeks, so I started over with fresh paint on my palette.
White, 2 yellows, 2 reds, 2 blues, and a mixture of the darkest blue with the darkest red. All that the Sawtooth oil painting required was a brown and about 3 greens. No need to waste all that paint once Sawtooth was finished. What to do?
I could have covered it and put it in the freezer. Eventually, I did that. But first, do you remember the hot peppers that I painted for a friend’s kitchen?
Now I get to paint a tomato for her. There is no deadline, but I started it now because the paint was just itching to be used.
The photo is to help me know how to place the darks and lights. Because it is a tomato and they aren’t supposed to be identical, I don’t care if the shape is exactly the same. Because I like brightly colored tomatoes, I am relying on my memory for the best colors. Because this is the first layer, it will get better as I go.
It’s good to get a thing started.
A week or so ago, I showed you the very rough beginnings of 5 new Mineral King oil paintings. In spite of the scribbly appearance, a faithful blog reader claimed one of them. She knows I can paint, although at this stage there isn’t much visual evidence to back up her confidence in my abilities.
This necessitated a new painting. It is a weird mini factory assembly line situation to paint 2 of the same scene at the same time. Efficient, but like deja vu all over again.
Sawtooth is a popular subject in the Silver City Store (4 miles below Mineral King). It is visible from the seat of Tulare County, Visalia, on the days when we aren’t qualifying for the worst air in the nation. The smog funnels through the Altamont Pass and into the Central Valley, a fluke of geography. Sigh.
But I digress. Here are the other little Mineral King paintings in progress. The first one is aspen trees along the Nature Trail, the lower end of the same trail with the view of Sawtooth.
The one on the upper left is the Monarch/Sawtooth trail, heading back down to Mineral King. Upper right is White Chief (the greenish color in the sky is the result of dropping my palette on it, and it will be repaired in the next layer of paint); bottom painting is the trail leading out of Atwell Mill through the redwood trees.
Atwell Mill is the campground below Silver City in a mostly logged grove of sequoia (AKA redwood) trees. The trail below leads to the East Fork of the Kaweah, one of the best trails in the Mineral King area.
P.S. In case you think these paintings look as if I can’t paint, please be reassured that each one needs at least one more layer. That layering method is called “glazing” in Artspeak. It is what allows this pencil artist to paint without coming unglued at the inability to erase.
Remember Paul Harvey? We had to be quiet during lunch so my parents could listen to him every day at noon when we were home from school. He would tell a story sometimes with a surprise ending, and then he would say, “And now you know. . . (long, very long, very very long extended pause). . . the REST of the story.”
Remember the pencil drawing of the walnut grove? The recipient loved it.
Remember the very difficult and (for me) very large painting of the Oak Grove bridge?
It is finished. It now hangs in my dining room, because I am really happy with it. If you want to buy it, it can hang in your dining room.
Remember a painting I did of a trail in Mineral King? I improved on it a bit. Without showing you the old version, you might not recognize the improvements.
Remember the habañeros? The commissioned oil painting is finished. I still don’t know how to dispose of the peppers themselves. If I bury them in the garden, they might grow new ones. . . can’t be growing toxic waste in my yard that way. . . put them in the green waste bin? But they are red!
Finally, remember the “easy” painting of the bridge?
And now you know. . . .
(very long pause)
the REST of my stories.
These habañero red hot chile peppers are fun to paint. Check out the progress.
I chose this view because, without slipping into boring Artspeak, it fills the space well, and I like it.
The first pass provides an underpainting and also gives me a chance to decide if the arrangement is pleasing.
Instead of printing a photo to use, I just kept the photo up on the laptop. I have the peppers to check the coloring, but I’m afraid to touch them.
There is something fun about mixing all the reds and oranges. It might simply be the contrast against all the greens, grays and browns of my usual landscape paintings.
One more pass over the canvas to perfect some tiny areas and to put in the stems ought to do it for these red hot chile peppers. Samson will be on standby to keep me company. He seems to be enjoying The Great Course called “Understanding the Fundamentals of Music”, which I’m listening to while painting these days.
A friend commissioned me to do a little painting of a jalapeño pepper.
She liked it so much that she brought me 2 habañero peppers, one of the hottest chili peppers available.
Treating them like toxic materials made it a little tricky to photograph them, but I persevered.
Now I have to decide which arrangement is most pleasing for the second painting. I’ve narrowed it to these four ideas and will have the real peppers on hand to make sure the colors are correct. Sure does make me nervous to touch them. . .
Before I saw them, I assumed I’d be using a green background, but that will hide the stems. Gray might be the right solution.
And in case you were wondering if all I do is work, please be reassured that I always find time to knit. A friend is waiting for a new pair of lungs, and there will be a fund raising dinner with silent auction and pick-a-prize items. I made these 2 infinity scarves for the event, and the blue/red/brown one already sold! No worries, I have just finished a brown/teal and have a second one on the needles, which I might be tempted to keep. Kind of tempted to keep the aqua one, but my friend needs to pay for her lung transplant infinitely more than I need another scarf.
Oh wait – you need to see what an infinity scarf looks like, not just all the colors.
