Yesterday we saw two brand new paintings on the easels, looking like they’ll never get finished. Eventually most paintings do. Layer after layer, keep studying, figuring out what to do next and how to improve it every time I pick up the brushes.
Today we will see some finished and some unfinished paintings.
This is how the bright fruit painting has settled into its new home.
This is a good showing of the progression of my colored art: First I worked in colored pencil, then I practiced mixing colors by painting many pomegranates. Now I get a real kick out of mixing all colors, combining lots of photos, and just pantsing it on the canvas.
The new fruit painting for my friend/customer is completed, signed, and moved into the house for drying.
This is in the painting workshop just before I moved it into the house. I am very happy with this one and glad I did a new painting for my friend rather than just messing with the older one by changing some of the fruits.
There are three unfinished pieces waiting for attention.
I was hoping to keep this when it is finished, but I will put it in the 2024 show and it WILL be for sale. (I can always paint another one of my favorite type of subject.)
This one has had several do-overs and a very long time-out; I’m still not convinced that I can do the subject justice but I will continue to try.
First, the wire needs to be moved. Then I will commence to draw lots of golden colored ferns.
All of these paintings started out as the same sort of vague mess as the ones we looked at yesterday. Nevuh nevuh nevuh give up.
Here is a look at two new paintings, begun for the solo show in October of 2024. Seems very far away, but it takes awhile to paint enough pieces to fill a gallery on one’s own. I have about 30 available (several unfinished but in progress which I will show you tomorrow) so I need to paint another 10-20 pieces. I’m thinking 20 is better, because I paint small. Even when I think it is HUGE, such as 18×24 which feels ENORMOUS and takes FOREVER, it looks like a postage stamp in a gallery.
This one is 16×20. I can’t find the photo on my computer, don’t remember where or when I took this, and can’t really discern the details on the little photograph.
So why bother? It has wonderful light and the road pulls the viewer in.
It will involve some “artistic license”, and I will focus on the contrast between light and shadow. Slow layer after slow layer, lots of thinking and evaluating—that will be the process on this one.
I decided to do something different with something familiar, using a 10×30″ canvas that I had on hand. The sizes of canvas on hand often dictates what I paint. If it isn’t a tried and true subject, I keep the painting small. This is a tried and true subject, even if you can’t tell what it is at this early stage.
Can you recognize what this mess is?
Lots of painting ahead for your Central California artist as she plans the best way to show off the parts of Tulare County that keep her from moving to the beach. (As if she could afford that; besides, she’d miss Trail Guy.)
Feeling fruity around here lately. A month or 2 ago, I painted this to decorate a banquet for a citrus marketing outfit.
A friend who has bought more of my paintings than anyone else saw this. She said, “If it doesn’t sell at the event, I want it!”
I took the painting to her, and she said, “I’ve been thinking. . . could you change one of these to a pomegranate? And include both kinds of persimmons?”
I said, “Sure, I can do that!”
Then I brought it home, thought it over, and decided to do a new piece for her. I dug through my fruit photos, looking carefully at the lighting and angles. Then, unlike my normal approach, I drew it out.
This is going to be good—colorful and well planned.
The other fruit painting I recently painted as a gift, I did without any real planning. I just pantsed it, trying this and that with paint, having fun with color.
I like it, and so does the recipient. Yeah, yeah, it probably would have been better to plan it. Sometimes I just rebel.
P.S. Good thing I painted a new one because the original, Citrus Row, sold at CACHE’s Holiday Fair!
After a chunk of time away from the easels, I was very happy to return.
First I got to finish the fruit painting that will be a gift. (I will be GIVING it, not “gifting” it.)
This is wet, photographed here in the box I used to carry it into the house to dry.
I started this quite awhile ago, working from a photo shared with me by one of my drawing students. The ferns had been nipped by frost, turning them golden.
Although I am working from a photo, I am rearranging the trees. Here is a photo of the photo, which I am looking at on my laptop while painting.
My hope is to make those ferns perfect. Just perfect. But there is lots to be painted before I get there.
The new paintings won’t be at the Gift Fair but there will be plenty of merchandise to choose from.
“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?
The Great Western Divide is the name given to the ridge of peaks seen from the top of Moro Rock in the Sierra Nevada. On this side, water drains west and on the other side, it drains east .
I haven’t painted this before, at least not from this view. The mountains show in the distance of many of my citrus/foothills/mountain scenes, but only once did I try to make them perfect. And that was tricky, because I worked from many photos, piecing the range together, and then faking the hills.
Why did I fake the hills? Because they were different in every single photo, because each photo was taken from a different place. There is no place besides an aircraft where you can see the entire width of the Sierra Nevada.
Here we go. . .
At the end of the painting session, the light was a bit too low to be accurate on both the colors and the shapes.
So, I photographed it the next morning in the bright sunlight. Looks washed out because the wet paint is reflective.
When it is dry, I will scan it, and then, as always, I will tell you it looks better in person.
The Great Western Divide, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×12″, $125.
The ArtSpeak word for slowly building paintings with layers is “glazing”. You’re welcome.
This might be finished. The photo on the left was taken in the afternoon; the one on the right was taken the next morning. I’m hard-pressed to tell you which is more accurate.
Wait, nope, I spent yet another hour on the phone with someone whose main phrase was, “Yes Ma’am”, as she tried to figure out AGAIN why my new phone won’t work. Or wait, is it the new SIM card? Perhaps it is the new provider?
See a pattern here? It is the word “new”.
STOP WITH THE CHANGES AND UPGRADES AND UPDATES ALREADY!!
Okay, where were we. . . oh yes, in the day’s accomplishments and forward progress at the easels.
Neither of these paintings are finished, but they are both much closer than the last time you saw them.
The base of the tree was beginning to look good.
Not good enough yet, but much closer.
That Sequoia is called the Sentinel Tree and it is in front of the building formerly known as the Giant Forest Market. Now it is the Giant Forest Museum.
The difficult thing about this commission wildflower piece is keeping the edges of the poppies slightly blurry so that the brodiaea AKA Blue Dick really jumps out.
I love this kind of detailed realism, even if it does take (almost) all day. And both of these subjects are exactly what one would expect from a Central California artist. All that is missing is some oranges.
Hmmm, I am sort of like country music with my three subjects: redwood trees, poppies, and citrus. (Country music’s three subjects are cheatin’, drinkin’, and storytellin’.)
Wait, I also paint Mineral King, cabins, single oranges, entire groves, the foothills with mountains in the background, various views of the Sierra Nevada, Three Rivers, and whatever else people are interested in hiring me to paint.
Phew. Thought for a moment I was gittin’ real simple-like.
See? I did more than just be on hold and paint. . . I did me some thinkin’. Real high-quality thought.
These new oil paintings may look familiar to you from seeing them in progress.
Inventory was low; with the Holiday Bazaar in the near future (November 18 at the Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building) and seeking a new vendor, it was time to start producing.
Salt Creek Trail, 8×8″, $100
Alta, Kaweah Lake, Lupine, 6×12″, $125
Sunny Sequoias II, 6×12″, $125
Cattle Crossing, 6×6″, $60
P.S. They all look better in person, but I think you might know that by now.
The painted designs on the wall for a new exhibit called Native Voices at the Three Rivers Historical Museum are finished!
The last day began with little green men, called “The Gathering”. The lighter green was ready for a second coat, and the rest of the shadows had to be drawn in. That should have been very simple, but I struggled a bit on some of the placement. (There was plenty of touch-up base coat paint for erasures.)
This is how the whole wall looked.
Next, I had to figure out how to put the shadows on the far right diamonds, called “Rattlesnake”. Instead of transferring the pattern a bit to the right of the existing diamonds or drawing it in pencil, I used masking tape to “draw” it. This took a lot of thought and measurement. I would think that it was ready to paint, stand back, and see yet another missing strip. Sometimes I was protecting the diamond edge, and sometimes I was shaping the shadows.
Everything took two coats of paint. I wasn’t sure the tape would peel cleanly, but it did fine. While looking here on my computer screen, it appears that some of my spacing is off. Some of those lines got eyeballed, so the entire thing is bound to look hand-painted rather than like applied vinyl. My customer, the Mineral King Preservation Society, looked into vinyl but chose paint instead, a choice which suits me very well.
While the paint was drying, I started touching up the drips and wobbles, along with covering the visible pencil lines and smudges from the graphite transfer paper. The smaller red diamonds called “Quail” had no shadows. Thank goodness, because these were small and detailed. Maybe I should have taped them, but every job is a completely new challenge, and I just bumble through, wishing that sometimes I could have a couple of jobs the same so that the new knowlege wouldn’t be wasted.
Finally, I decided to peel off the tape, risking disaster. (That’s an exaggeration, because as long as there was paint remaining in the necessary colors, anything could be fixed.)
I peeled and only saw a few parts that needed retouching. Acrylic paint (or latex or whatever non-oil paint is) dries so fast, which is a real bonus on a job like this.
Finally, here is a look at the whole wall.
The display will have cabinets in matching colors placed strategically beneath the colorful wall designs.
A few more facts:
The colors were chosen to not clash with the other 2/3 of the room. (The red is magical—sometimes it looks red, sometimes it looks rust, and sometimes it looks pink, and get this: the name is pumpkin spice!)
The other 2/3 of the room is for the Mineral King exhibit, a thorough look at geology, mining, the Disney era, and cabin life in, of course, where else, Mineral King.
The Native Voices exhibit is put together by the MKPS for the Three Rivers Historical Museum. That 1/3 of the room isn’t the responsibility of the MKPS, but the MKPS has paid employees who are real go-getters. They know how to find money, and they wanted the entire room to look cohesive.
This is going to be a great display, and I encourage you to visit the museum!
