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.

Buckling Down Further

I looked at this painting and decided it could wait.

Instead, I decided to work on the marmot.

And then the deer.

Finally, I wanted to do something easy, so I put the first layer on these three paintings.

I’d call that a productive-enough day!

P.S. Probably shouldn’t have signed the marmot. His nose is weird. I didn’t sign the deer because his face is a little weird too. Probably should just stick to scenery and architecture.

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.

Buckling Down

“Buckling down” is a weird expression. It reminds me of sayings such as “nose to the grindstone”, “shoulder to the wheel”, “eye on the ball”. . . How can a person accomplish anything in that awkward pose?

It was a beautiful early spring day (Yeppers, February is spring in Three Rivers).

Tucker wanted me to stay outside with him.

After a fair amount of procrastination (all productive, of course), I finally moved myself into the painting workshop (the open door to the right of the studio, which appears to be leaning, but that was actually me who was leaning.)

Because these are so small (3×9”), I did my best to make them as realistic as possible without spending endless hours trying to copy the exact look of each flower. We’ll price them at $75 each and see what happens.

Then I finally returned to the Mineral King scenes that need to be completed by Memorial Weekend. I tried to be a bit looser than normal, and after I finish all 10 paintings, it will be interesting to see if I go back and tighten up the detail.

I think this one is finished.

These are not finished.

Jackson started nagging and then biting me.

Heading back outside now. . .

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.

Around Here

On a sunny morning in Three Rivers, Trail Guy and I took a drive up the Mineral King Road to see how far we could get, and to see what the construction project looks like.

We only made it to the lower gate. Although word went out that the construction crew was on hiatus until the following week, that word was wrong. We had a nice visit with the gatekeeper, who said that she couldn’t keep us from going ahead, but that we would encounter large trucks at Lookout Point. Her job is to tell people that the road is closed, but she isn’t a sheriff. So, not wanting to get in the way, we turned back. We were disappointed that the construction crew was back. However, being mature adults, we soldiered back home.

I only took one photo. Even though it is very green out, this photo captures all the brown and gray of mid winter.

So, we came home, and I gave myself a dirt manicure. These pots contained sprouting daffodil bulbs, and I hope our gophers around here haven’t begun to appreciate them. Deer and gophers are capricious in their tastes.

Reader Marjie requested more cat photos, so Pippin posed for her.

This pose is called The Meatloaf.
He chased Tucker off the rock.

Then I went into the studio to tackle the dreaded year-end bookkeeping. Tiresome stuff.

Tomorrow I plan to paint in Ivanhoe.

Due to the unstable and variable nature of my website (working/notworking/working/not working. . .), I may not be able to post anything on Friday. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Due to my limited capacity to tolerate both bookkeeping and tech phone calls, I will just hope the site works over the weekend so that I can show you Friday’s mural progress.

New Oil Commission, Chapter 6

We last saw this oil painting commission looking like this. I actually wrote a long list of parts that need work, but it was really unnecessary because I can see what to do.

We refer to this section of trail as the Green Tunnel in the summer months and the Yellow Tunnel in the fall. Customer Mister asked that I add some yellow leaves; I think he would like the painting to reflect the crossover time between the two seasons. So, I did.

Then I kept tinkering around, adding branches, background, more leaves to the upper right, more bark, more trunks in the distance, on and on and on. Who will tell me if/when I finish this?? Not yet—the humanoid will take hours of tiny brush work.

This needs to dry for a little while before I keep detailing. Tomorrow I will be showing you another oil painting commission.

New Oil Commission, Chapter 5

Before I finished layering the background things, I blew off any discipline about painting, ignored conventional wisdom about The Way You Are Supposed to Paint, and I launched into detailing.

When I draw, I work from top to bottom, left to right. This way I don’t rest my hand on finished parts, thus not smearing graphite around. So, in spite of generally painting from back to front (the farthest away thing like the sky first, moving forward toward the closest objects), sometimes I resort to drawing with my paintbrush in places where there are enough layers to warrant the detail. This means the left side of the canvas might start looking pretty good while the middle and the right side still resembles a dog’s breakfast.

I couldn’t see very well with the doors open and bright light behind the canvas, so I rotated it. Hence, the colors appear to have changed. (Did anyone notice this?)

Bark on trees, more branches, better grasses, humanoid becoming more human (and now wearing shorts), more leaves, more this, that, and the other thing.

It was a very satisfying afternoon of painting (and only a little mosquito slapping.)

HEY, SEARCH ENGINES, IN CASE YOU ARE LISTENING, THIS IS A PIECE OF CUSTOM ART, AN OIL PAINTING OF A MINERAL KING SCENE. (Just in case there are a handful of folks who wish to join my tens of readers and see how a painting is built by this regional artist, this self-trained, user of a paintbrush like a pencil.)

WHAP, SLAP!! WHY are there mosquitos still plaguing me in November, for Pete’s sake?!

New Oil Commission, Chapter 4

About the mural

The threat of rain prevented me from beginning on Friday. More relevant:the powers that be did not offer me a key to their building, which means I can only paint on Fridays. This coming Friday I will be setting up for the Holiday Bazaar, and the following Friday is part of Thanksgiving weekend, with no idea if the library will be open. So, why start and then wait 4 weeks before continuing??

Commissioned Mineral King Oil Painting

This custom piece of art, a commissioned oil painting of a Mineral King scene for a customer we will call Mister while not assigning any pronouns in order to protect anonymity, is starting to come together enough that I am no longer questioning the wisdom of accepting the job.

You can see the difference in color below because the sun was behind the hill. The inferior camera phone makes adjustments for low light, while changing the color. I sat down to work on the foreground, to get the darks and lights in the right places, hoping the colors were good (are shadows blue? purple? or just darker dirt and darker grass colors?). Tricky stuff to paint in low light.

I got tired of slapping mosquitos so I stopped after here. (Stopped painting, in hopes that I could stop slapping.)

I am still somewhat apprehensive about my ability to create a humanoid which is not only believable, but recognizable.

But it is too soon to worry about this. Actually, why worry at all? Instead, I’ll continue to paint.

I considered making a list of everything remaining, but it is too soon for that too.

New Oil Commission, Chapter 3

On Monday, you saw this version of the custom oil painting of a Mineral King scene.

Next, I put more paint on the sky and worked more carefully on West Florence. (The humanoid is still a mess.)

Time to rescue the humanoid from embarrassing me. Wait, time to rescue me from the embarrassment of the humanoid. Something. . .

What’s different here? A little more background spots, using dark green and the grayish blue/bluish gray of West Florence.

Let’s make like a tree and leaf.

More color and texture on the tree trunks.

Something… Oh. I moved the tree on the left closer to the viewer.

In spite of using Trail Guy as a human-size model in the scene, I’ve decided to make the human larger in the painting.

Many more leaves, branches, trunks, grasses, and trail work to go before getting into the nitty-gritty of putting the correct human in the painting. That is going to stretch my skill to the nth degree.