A Welcome Bear

We have bears in our neighborhood, and they are a nuisance. However, there was a welcome bear in my workshop recently. Literally a welcome bear.

This odd job came from the same man who had me repaint Little Bucky.

I started with the letters.

Next, I rotated him to experiment with brown fur colors. He’s not a “brown bear”, which is another name for a grizzly. Our bears are called “black bears”, without regard to their colors.

I mixed in some dark purple with the brown to give it variety; it makes the brown much darker. The whole idea was to have variation in the fur coloring.

The ears got a touch of pink—but less than appears in this photo.

Finally, I sent these two photos to Mr. Customer, and he was pleased, so I am too.

Bears around here tend to have lighter colored muzzles, so now this guy does too, regardless of whatever color it was when he was new. I also put a few splinters into his sign. The lettering is actually bright white, not light blue. The funniest part to me was that when he was wet, I turned his entire being by grabbing his nose. Don’t be trying that on a live one!

Odd Job and Phooey

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A woman contacted me via my connection with the Arts Consortium This is Tulare County’s designated arts council, an active and helpful group.

She had a request for a custom oil painting, which on the surface sounded normal. We began discussing via email, and eventually I learned the odd particulars of her job. She has a window in her home which looks out onto the neighbor’s wall, about 1 yard away. The window is a very specific measurement, and she would like a painting to exactly fill the space, 16-3/8 x 29-7/8″.

That is not a standard size. (Bet you already guessed that one.)

The customer, living in a city, has access to many businesses, such as a place that makes custom canvases.

Before she called the company, I remembered that when I first was learning to oil paint, I painted on Masonite, primed with many coats of flat white house paint. Back in 2006, I bought a sheet of 4×8′ Masonite (also called “panel board”), along with a table saw (which I put in the front passenger seat of Fernando*), and then Trail Guy cut the boards to the sizes that I requested. (Nope, I’m not risking my fingers on that machine.)

I looked through my scraps, but none were large enough to cut to size.

So, I took the pick-em-up truck to Vise-grip (AKA Visalia) to buy a sheet of Masonite, hoping I could buy a 1/2 sheet. At the least, I was hoping they’d be able to cut the full sheet into 4 pieces, but just in case they couldn’t, I left Fernando at home. 

Alas, the correct saw at the big box store was broken. So, I bought the giant sheet and some really helpful guy with a really foul mouth helped me load it after he saw me wrestling with it in the parking lot. (He was not an employee: remember this was a big box store, not known for helpfulness).

Trail Guy figured out how to cut it to the exact dimension.


Then, when he was figuring out where to store the excess, HE FOUND A SCRAP FROM BEFORE THAT WAS BIG ENOUGH!!

Phooey. 

*Fernando is my ’96 Honda Accord coupe. “Coupe” means two doors. You’re welcome. I try to expand people’s vocabularies here.

Odd Job With a Goose

This is Tony’s wooden goose with a coat of primer on it.

He didn’t give me any instructions other than to paint the goose. I found several helpful photos of Canada geese to work from, with visible head, neck, wing tops, wing bottoms, tail and the back.(What did people do before The Google came along to answer all our questions? They didn’t say yes to as many odd jobs.)

First step: mixing paint. I used my mural paints because this will be outside and because it needed to dry quickly.

White, burnt umber and phthalo blue, along with some grays, browns, a purple and an orange.

The first color, black, was achieved with the purple (alizarin crimson and ultramarine blue), phthalo and orange (cadmium yellow and cadmium red). I made a small dot of the color with white and it made a pure gray, so I knew it was black and not purple or brown or green.

Here is a brown that will work. It is an old mixture that I called “dark redwood”, but altered a bit here with orange and some of the black.

Ahem. I seemed to have painted this guy’s head upside down.

Better!

Found another photo of a goose’s back.

The underside of the wings are important, because this is a flapping goose that will be seen from all angles. I was able to flip the photos horizontally in order to see the goose both directions.

Will this work? Do I need more detail? The color is grayer on my goose than on The Google’s goose. Can I trust the photo? Will Tony be disappointed?

It was easiest to paint when it was lying flat and I could see each side at the same time.

Am I finished? I’ll email this photo to Tony and see what he says.

Whoa, Tony, you’d better come get this goose because he is trying to fly outta here!

Odd Job Completed

The odd job of painting a mailbox took about 4 hours. Maybe 5, but that extra hour was probably due to my own inexperience and lack of confidence. Oh, and another hour working on the colored pencil design. 

Will the customer be happy? As a friend, will she tell me the truth if she isn’t happy? I think she will – honesty is one of the things I appreciate about her. She is kind and professional too.

I have some wonderful friends.

She likes it!!

Now, will I start getting mailbox painting requests??

More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Odd Job

Because I am an artist who has lived in the same area for over 30 years, making art the entire time, when people need something art related, no matter how odd, I often get asked. People ask me to do things that I am supremely unqualified to do, lacking skill and experience.

Sometimes, no, often, I say yes. I try to warn them that I am out of my area of expertise and that the results might not be what they expected. (“Past performance is no guarantee of future results” or some such disclaimer?)

Variety is good. Stretching one’s abilities is good. The trouble is, I have only been asked to paint on a quilt square once, a patio umbrella one time, an antique window once. . . is this because I didn’t do a good job, or because there aren’t enough of those types of jobs? 

This odd job is a mailbox for a property management company. My friend told me her idea and showed me a photo of her mailbox. I did 3 sketches for her, she picked one, I gave her a price range and some instructions on how to prepare the mailbox and then drew it again showing both sides and the top, using colored pencils. Then I warned her that trying to achieve tight detail with acrylic paint and small brushes might not produce my normal quality of work.

She said she liked the design and the price and wants the job done. We had to plan this for a weekend when she could remove the mailbox on Friday and replace it on Monday. No pressure or anything. . .

Odd Job

As an artist in business since 1987 in Tulare County (full time since 1993), I occasionally get asked to do odd jobs. It is challenging and usually fun. If an artist is established and available, it is one of the many parts of the business of art.

A giclee is a reproduction on canvas done with some sort of special printer, often coated with something so it looks like a painting.

Some friends have a giclee of a blue jay, and they had a painting accident while changing the color of their living room.

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See those drips? Here, look a little more closely.

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First I tried a bit of turpentine. Nope. The drips are dry.

Next, I’ll see if oil paint will stick to the surface. This will involve mixing a bunch of different shades of gray. (Too bad I can’t use pencil.)

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Woohoo! That was easy and fun. I really like this painting, which is odd, because my own style is much tighter.

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Hmmm, look how good it looks on a blue background. I’m tempted to copy this painting for myself, but must maintain professional business ethics. Phooey.

Odd Job, Chapter Four

Finally, I got to the actual painting stage of my odd job.

The Blue Moon Nursery got a 4’x8′ piece of very thick plywood, built a frame around it and painted it with multiple coats of white paint. This was a result of walking out to the road and measuring the existing signs. A medium sign looks like an unnoticeable postage stamp when you pass it in a car. A big sign might get noticed. A huge sign is too much for this Central California artist, so we just went with big.

I traced our final design onto a clear piece of plastic and using an overhead projector in three stages of measuring and adjusting. I used a Sharpie marker to transfer the image, along with a square, a yardstick, and a long tape measure. It took a very long time.

Then, I traced it from Side One onto 2 18″ x 8′ pieces of tracing paper, retraced it with a very black pencil on the back side, taped the 2 sheets to Side Two of the sign, and retraced it over the top with a pencil to transfer the design to the sign. Then I retraced the faint pencil transfer with the Sharpie. This took a very very long time.

Do you need a nap yet? Hang on, color is coming!

After a very fun color mixing session with the owner of Blue Moon, I began painting.

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First, a small brush to reach into the pointy places.

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Then, 2 coats of the dark blue. Next the green. Hmmm, we really like the color of the masking tape with the dark blue.

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I can mix that color! (This is actually side 2, after we chose a different blue for the moon and the spirals). The new blue called for a new green.

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Check out Side Two, with masking tape blue and light spring green!

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This is Side One, with a darker green and a lighter blue.

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Isn’t this cool? The owner of Blue Moon and I both are slightly offbeat, marching to the beat of a different drummer, enjoying variety. (After being friends for 4-5 years, we discovered that we were in the same class in the same high school!)

So, we decided to let the 2 sides remain in different (but very close) colors, and then we’ll listen to people’s comments. It is my guess that very few people will even notice the difference.

Thus, I conclude my story of yet another odd job for this Central California artist. It is a pleasure to beautify Three Rivers!

Do you have a preference on the colors on Side One and Side Two? I’d love to hear your opinion!

Odd Job, Chapter Three

My odd job of painting a sign for the Blue Moon Nursery in Three Rivers progressed through the decision making progress.

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This combination of type was our first choice. The style of Blue Moon is a little hippy-dippy, loosey-goosey, whimsical (sorry, can’t think of a rhyme for that word). “Nursery” looks solid, professional, steadfast, here to stay.

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It needs some decoration, but this wasn’t the right one.

The owner and I decided on the best combination of type and decorations, and then got to the part we both love (both avowed color junkies).

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We both love the dark purply-blue, the high contrast with the white lettering, and it is a given that the growy needs to be green and the moon needs to be blue. Color is sooooo fun.

Now what? How will I get this colored sketch onto a 4′ x 8′ board??

Stay tuned!

Odd Job, Chapter Two

It is a bit odd for a pencil artist/drawing teacher/oil painter/muralist to be asked to paint a sign. The owner of Blue Moon Nursery in Three Rivers knew we would work well together, so she decided to overlook my lack of experience and hire me for the odd job. (Odd job to me, but sign painting is a solid profession. I’d like to have the tools, ability and knowledge to do it well.)

After messing around with typestyles and shapes and weights, it was time to add the extras. A nursery asks for things that look growy, and “Blue Moon” is sort of a gimme.

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None of these made the cut (what exactly and literally does that mean??).

The owner of Blue Moon Nursery had some definite and good ideas, and together we came up with an excellent combination of type and frou-frous.

Stay tuned for the decision and the next steps.

Odd Job, Chapter One

Is sign painting an odd job for an artist?

It depends. If you live in a city where there are sign painters, they would be a logical choice for a sign.

If you live in Three Rivers, have a limited budget, would rather not drive 35 miles and want to have input, then choosing an artist might be a good decision. Blue Moon Nursery, AKA Sierra Garden Center, is one of my top 5 places to spend money in Three Rivers. (grocery store, post office, hardware store and Sierra Subs)

My sign painting odd job began with a conversation: “How comfortable are you with lettering?”

I’ve learned to just listen and ask questions, so we moved along until I decided that perhaps I could figure this thing out.

First, I messed around with type – the styles and the arrangements seemed endless.

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It was a progression as I experimented with different styles, different weights and different curves. The final one here was my first choice.

Stay tuned to see what the next decision was!