Looks Better in Person

All my paintings look better in person. Maybe I should I stop showing you my paintings in progress so that you will be inclined to attend my show at Arts Visalia in April.

Nah.  These posts could cause you to either really become interested in the show or run away screaming.

Now that I see the before and after together, I am wondering if the upper painting (before) looks better than the lower painting (after). 

I added more sky on the upper right, more detail in the corn lily on the bottom left (weird colors in the photo aren’t true), more detail to the corn lily on the bottom right and put in more distant forest.

Now that I see the photos here, I can see some botanical problems with the trees.

I’ll keep working on it.

Big and Slow

After painting the snowy sequoia scene, 24×48″, these current 18×36″ pieces shouldn’t feel large to me. 

Alas, they do.

I often tell my drawing students, “You can be fast or you can be good – you get to decide”. Then I say that in pencil, I get to be both fast and good. (If it is true, it isn’t bragging.)

In oil painting, it is necessary for me to be slow in order to be good, at least the way I define good (and my customers too, or they wouldn’t be customers).

These two oil paintings on the easels are going v e r y  s l o w l y.

I am jumping all over the canvas (not literally, don’t worry), chasing around different sections, based on the colors I mix and what catches my interest. Eventually it will all get covered.

The only difference between these two photos of the sunny sequoias is that I cleaned yellow off my brush on the second one. It was left from finishing the edges on the cowboy painting. The entire canvas needs to be covered multiple times, and wasting oil paint hurts my frugal heart, so now there is a strangely colored first layer near the bottom.

Your Central California artist continues to make art you understand, of places and things you love, at prices that won’t scare you.

(But sometimes her early color choices might.)

Working Studio

Some people get the words “studio” and “gallery” mixed up. A studio is where one creates art (as in “study”), and a gallery is where art is displayed and sold (we hope).

I have two studios: one is my real studio, where I draw and do computer things and paperwork; the other is actually part of a giant workshop building attached to our garages where I paint. It is a mess, which is fine for a place to paint, because sometimes I drop paintbrushes or spill turpentine. It is also where our three cats live safely at night.

This is a recent look at the workshop, my painting studio. Paintings in various stages of progress and drying are occupying the visible space; other paintings are stacked on shelves, waiting to be finished. Blank canvases are also stacked on shelves and leaning against the shelves too; since painting large, it is a little trickier to manage my canvases, especially when they are wet.

All this is in preparation for a show scheduled for January 2022. (If you see something you want to buy directly from me and not wait for it to be in a gallery, let’s talk!)

I make art that you can understand, about places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.

(but sometimes the painting workshop might be a little scary.)

Big Ideas Advancing

After many days of hunching over my giant magnifying light in the studio, the urge to paint became stronger than the desire to avoid smoky air, hot temperatures, and handicapping orange light. My paintings receive many layers, so if the colors and values are wrong at this stage, it is only temporary.

The photos are blurry. I am taking each cowboy and the dog all from different photos and sincerely hope to gather enough visual information to not mess any of them up. Entirely new territory for this Central California artist, but not outside of my declared geographical area of Tulare County. (Thank you to my friend Susan for supplying the photos!)

Time to move into more familiar subject matter.

Finished, Finished, and Finished

Here are the scanned versions of the most recently finished oil painting commissions. Scanning produces better results than photographing, but first the paintings have to be dry. This is why there is a time lapse between you seeing them on the easel and seeing the finished product. But don’t be confused by the bridge – I didn’t get around to showing it to you on the easel until it was actually finished and dry in real life.  

Devol Coat of Arms
Green Tunnel, Mineral King
Oak Grove Bridge XXXI (#31), but probably closer to #35 since I didn’t number my oil paintings very accurately for a few years.)

If you are like me, you are curious to see the difference between the last 6×18″ Oak Grove Bridge and the current one. It is interesting that I can paint from the same photo twice and get different results. Some of this is because I have to just make up the “growies”, since there is no way to copy them exactly. Besides, real life is messy. And speaking of real life, there probably isn’t as much difference in the colors between the 2 paintings if we saw them in person. So much has to do with how it photographs or scans.

Oak Grove Bridge XXIX (#29)

If you ever think you might like a painting from a photo you see on my blog (or one you’ve taken), or if you’d like a painting that has already sold, I can do that for you.

Slow Start

An idea came to me about painting again. Start slow, and do three paintings for an upcoming situation. (If it is interesting enough, I’ll tell you about it next week.)

First step is to choose the photos. I thought I’d paint all three alike but then couldn’t decide which version.
Putting on the hanging hardware and titling the pieces is a step I’ve known other artists to skip. Not this little gray duck – titles are important for identification and inventory purposes, and hanging hardware makes it much easier on the recipient of the painting.
That’s enough for starters.

I started these paintings using the method taught by Laurel Daniel last year in her three day plein air painting workshop in Georgia. I will follow her method until the real me takes over and I put in details, drawing with my paintbrush.

Continuing at the Easels

These little Mineral King paintings got some skies. It was cold and rainy, which meant it was dark in the painting workshop. Trail Guy kept offering to light the heater; that meant I’d have to shut the door, but I needed all the light there was, so brrr.

I worked more on the commissioned painting of the little Mineral King cabin, working from several photos to make up the scene. The customer requested that I put a horizontal subject into a vertical format; in order to make that work, I added mountains that weren’t visible to that degree in real life. This meant we had to do a lot of communicating and adjusting until the painting fit both her memory and the space she wants to hang it.

I scanned it, thinking it was finished. Then she asked about the doorknobs. It needed more trees behind and above the cabin. Bearskin, the patch of snow on the right slope of Vandever (peak on the right side of Farewell Gap) didn’t look the way she remembered it. 

The purpose of a commission is to create just what the customer wants.

(The color is different between photographs and scans.) I made the requested adjustments, and then reworked Bearskin yet again, with the customer’s help. (We might have stood closer than 6 feet to accomplish this, but so far, so good, health-wise.)

The most difficult commissioned drawings and paintings are the ones when the customer wants me to do something that I cannot see. This is possible only when the customer can articulate what she wants. My approach is that a commission isn’t finished until the customer is happy.

What is this??? 

The customer was so happy that she asked me to paint it again, smaller, to give away. (Just in case the intended recipient is reading, I’ll keep this information to myself).

Upside down is not an April Fool’s Joke. It helps me see the shapes more accurately. That might be a little unsettling to you, so we’ll continue more conventionally.

Not done, but moving quickly since all the difficult decisions were conquered in the original version.