Small Business Decision

The business of art is full of choices and decisions, and rarely is there a map or an instruction book. I can find things on the World Wide Web, but often the advice is contradictory, or geared toward folks who live in cities or sell in galleries. This forces me to do my own thinking, an exhausting proposition at times.

For the upcoming show on June 30, “ART: INSPIRED BY MINERAL KING”, I have been painting diligently since January. Many pieces have sold, so I just keep painting more. 

Last week I made a small decision: I am not going to show photos of the newest pieces I’ve finished on the blog. Instead, I am saving them for the actual show. Afterward, I will post them here, hopefully with a SOLD sign on them.

This is a marketing decision. Might be good, might be dumb. As my dad used to say, “Time will tell”. (I prefer “More will be revealed in the fullness of time”.)

Then what shall I show you today? How about Piper and some weird white poppies:

There are white poppies in my yard. Piper is puzzled by this.

Early Season Mineral King

It is almost cabin time in Mineral King. The road will open on Wednesday, May 23. Trail Guy was there last weekend, and these are his photos. The browns and grays are still dominating the greens, and there is some snow on the peaks but not in the valley. The last mile of the road is kind of messed up, but I haven’t driven it so can’t give you any specifics as to whether or not 4WD is required. I guess it all depends on how highly you regard your vehicle.

8 Recent Happenings

Today there are many topics to address, so we will have a long list.

  1. I went away with my sisters and our Mom for a family funeral. Supposed to be a sad time, but it was surprisingly fun. 

    Me and four of the most important women in my life feeling happy to be together
  2. Tomorrow and Sunday is the South Valley ARTists’ Studio Tour. Will I see you there? You can buy tickets the day of the event at the places listed on their website.
  3. I hope the studio tour has more attendance than First Saturday Three Rivers. There were 4 people covering for me at my studio while I was with my chicky-babes (see #1) and 11 visitors.  ELEVEN?? Bless you, those eleven who came out in the rain. I hope you enjoyed your wildflower freebie!
  4. What a week of learning! I actually designed a website for my friend who manages vacation rentals here in Three Rivers. She got tired of waiting for the guy who said he’d do it for her, and I jumped in with both feet but perhaps only half my brain. We will do a lot of polishing, but the site is ready to be seen. Sequoiavacationrentals.NET It was thrilling to be able to help her, to have some experience, to have all sorts of photos to supplement hers, to FIGURE THIS OUT!! It was hard. I did it anyway.
  5. Why am I designing a site for someone and paying someone else to design a site for me? Because mine is very very complicated. There is much work ahead for me. Good thing I practiced on my friend.
  6. It was so beautiful in Three Rivers this week that instead of working in the studio (drawings to be done for the 2019 calendar and a few more paintings, including a Sawtooth commission), I pulled weeds. It was a nice break from figuring out how to build a website.

    Lots and lots of weeds.
  7. Piper is doing well. There may be kittens soon; I hope the little guy adjusts and is polite.
  8. Trail Guy took a day trip to Mineral King. The road has a gnarly slide across it above the ranger station.

See why I had to make a list?? And, in case you were wondering, I am not superstitious about today’s day and date combination.

New Mineral King Cards For Sale

Last summer I had a hankering to draw some new Mineral King pictures in pencil. I did four of them without a plan for reproduction or framing. Artists make art, and I am a Central California artist making art of the flyover center of California, my main source of inspiration (along with liking to drive and to eat.)

This spring I decided to test the marketability of these drawings as cards. These are packages of 4 different cards, 5×7″, blank inside with envelopes, $15 per package. There are only 9 5 packages available. Through this blog post and Saturday’s open studio, I will decide if these are popular enough to print in greater quantity.

This sort of thing is just part of the business of art. Make the art I want, and then figure out if there is a market for it. . .

This is the insert that goes inside the package of cards. The drawings are too small to really appreciate on the insert, so I’ve placed them underneath. Scroll on, Gentle Blog Reader. What?? No Honeymoon Cabin?

Nope – sometimes an artist’s gotta do what she’s gotta do. (But she is willing to listen to customer requests, within reason.)

P.S. I thought at first that $15 was a little high-ish for 4 cards. Then I went inside a real store and looked at real cards that are sold one at a time. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? I was astonished at the prices, so believe these are a bargain.

More Mineral King Painting Factory 5

This one sold!
I like this one so much that if I saw it in a gallery, I’d probably buy it.
This is an 11×14 of White Chief.
When this is drier, I can add the flowers.
Piper is easier to paint with than Samson was. He is calmer.
This is Timber Gap, as seen from the trail nearing Crystal Creek, and that is Piper asleep under the easel.
This is the trail leaving Monarch Lake.
Those rocks along the sides of the trail are a time-consuming challenge. They don’t have to be exact, but they have to be believable, and there are so many. . .

At the end of last week, I had 4 more finished Mineral King oil paintings, a 6×18″ was sold, and the 2 paintings on hold were still just waiting their turns. Now it is time to count up again, evaluate by subject and size, and decide if I need to keep the factory producing more Mineral King oil paintings.

Really, truly, I just want to draw. I love to draw. Have I told you this?

P.S. Look out the window at the shingle siding on the studio!

Mineral King, Literally

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LAURA!

I went to Mineral King. Literally, this time. It was interesting to see in person what I have been painting, the winter version instead of the summer scenes.

First view of Sawtooth
methods of transportation – the Botmobile and the Trackster/snow buggy
Not enough snow on the road for snowmobiles, but the Trackster had no trouble.
Wow, clear view down to the valley 
Closer view of Sawtooth
The Honeymoon Cabin
Classic view from the bridge
SAY WHAT?? Someone worked hard to share this bizarre little joke with those who make it to MK in the winter!
Trail Guy skiing past the 10′ snow stake by the pack station
Trail Guy skiing through the cottonwoods; these are the ones that are so brilliantly yellow in the fall.
Farewell, Farewell (Gap).
View from the Trackster heading downhill.
What was snow in the morning was bare pavement in the afternoon.

Back to the easels. . . thanks for stopping by this week!

P.S. Last year at this time I was repainting the Mineral King mural and it was HOT out after a very wet winter; this year winter didn’t arrive until March. Weird.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory, Phase II

This year I have set the goal of finishing all the Mineral King oil paintings well before the season begins. The Silver City Store has been selling my oil paintings  since 2010, and it is good for them, for me, and for the customers. The past 8 years have provided a good idea of what sells and in what sizes and quantities. Why not look at this information and make a plan?

Phase I was finishing a large quantity of paintings in the month of January, some that were begun in December. The total was something crazy huge, like 2 dozen or so. I hadn’t planned on buying 4×6″ canvases or painting on 4 little boards that used to contain things like tomatoes, so the number went up. All this production forced me to figure out how to use my painting hours more efficiently, and in February, I am continuing with this plan.

(Do you need a nap yet? A cup of espresso?)

Phase II is filling in the gaps – do I have the right quantities of the best subjects in the most popular sizes? Nope, not yet.  Here is how beginning another 8 paintings looks. It’s not that pretty, but it is not as gross as making sausage, I guess, although I’ve never witnessed that operation.

Wiring and writing titles and inventory numbers.
Buh-bye, sweet little pomegranate that no one wants.
Skies come second, after I have “toned” the canvas, which is Artspeak for smearing the gunk from the bottom of the turpentine jar all over it and letting it dry.

There are about 6 more subjects I want to paint. These are also Mineral King, but they involve new scenes. 

If this seems a little repetitious to you, well, it is. It is a little repetitious to me to. That’s the thing about doing work for a seasonal business – it is repetitious because there are new customers every week, and they haven’t seen my paintings before. Or they saw them last year and want to add to the collection. Or, their friends saw their painting and wanted one too. 

Keep Painting, Central Calif. Artist

That’s me, talking to myself. Keep painting, Central California artist, keep painting!

I messed up and ordered 4×6″ canvases instead of 6×6″. This means I have some adjusting to do and some decisions ot make. 

The first step is to see how it is to paint on this size and shape.

The standard/classic Mineral King view of the Crowley family cabin with Farewell Gap in the background.
Vandever is the name of the peak that forms the right side of Farewell Gap.
The Honeymoon Cabin is tied with Sawtooth for the number 2 position in subject popularity.
The 6×18″ painting of Sawtooth sold before I put it on my web page for sale. Therefore, I am painting another 6×18″ of Farewell Gap with alpenglow.
Homer’s Nose is an interesting granite formation visible from the Yokohl curve, between Exeter and Lemon Cove. I love the view, but apparently I am the only one, so it is becoming Eagle Lake. Time will tell if there are more fans of Eagle Lake than of Homer’s Nose.
If you look very quickly at this rough version, you might get the idea of a lake forming.
This 8×10″ will contain a tremendous amount of detail. The challenge will be to emphasize the trail, keeping it from disappearing in all the textures.

Mineral King Oil Painting Factory 4

This is an 8×8″ of my tied-in-second-place Mineral King oil painting subject, the Honeymoon Cabin. It was part of the resort; then Disney bought up parts of the resort in hopes of building a ski area. That didn’t happen, and now this little cabin is a museum of artifacts and photos of Mineral King.

You saw it yesterday hanging on the wall drying. In my normal manner, I got things a little mixed up, posted yesterday as #4 and had today as #3. Then I switched things a few times and finally corrected it, but here is the Honeymoon Cabin at an earlier stage. I might be a bit dizzy from the oil fumes, or maybe the turp. Could be the propane, but I doubt it; the oil painting workshop room is extremely well ventilated (read “drafty”).

Oil paintings don’t dry very quickly; that is both the good thing about oil paint and the bad thing. Trail Guy set up this handy little shelf in front of the heater in the painting workshop/studio, and that will help things move along.

A Recent Friday in Mineral King

Last Friday, Trail Guy and I went to Mineral King.

Our first idea was to take the trail down to the river behind Lookout Point. It was steep steep steep and slippery too, and then it was completely unmaintained. We spent 30 minutes on it total – 19 down and 11 back up. Nice view from Lookout, the first glimpse of Sawtooth. Mostly we were thrilled by clear air!

The next stop was Trauger’s, a water trough along the road, decorated by sweet peas in early summer. They were planted by Mary Trauger, “the angel of Mineral King” who homesteaded up above the road with her husband Harry during the mining era. The site is up in the cedar trees above the road (not the trees at the top of the ridge).

We have to go up this?? We decided it would be prudent to come back down another way.The home site was farther than we expected along a sort of road that was very overgrown. There wasn’t much to photograph except the cedar trees and the fireplace. Isn’t it weird how that photo looks black and white, or maybe sepia toned?? We toodled on up to Redwood Creek (the 2 redwoods sometimes known as “Aunt Tillie and Uncle Pete”) for a quick lunch; the face flies were annoying because it was in the high 60s and low 70s out. Weird on December 28.Trail Guy suggested that we go on up the hill to the Mineral King where there are no face flies. There is also no snow.
Crystal Creek has ice but is still flowing.Sawtooth looked nice on the way back down the hill. It isn’t that nice – it simply appears to be nice. Wait, I mean it has a nice appearance. (I have a not-nice history with that peak. . . )The upper half of the Mineral King road has potholes. The lower part has potholes, more potholes, crumbling edges and overgrown borders. The public’s frustration is expressed on the sign – look closely, and you will see so much frustration that the writer used a double negative, which contradicts his intent.