sawtooth oil painting

Honesty, Diplomacy, and Wisdom

I have a wise friend who is both diplomatic and honest. She told me that a few of my paintings didn’t reflect my usual care, or perhaps she said they weren’t up to my usual standards— “lacking in detail and clarity”. (There were a couple of paragraphs so I’m summarizing here.)

I blamed the old scanner, but then decided to retouch the paintings after studying them in person. I can always add more detail to a painting! The difficulty is in knowing when to stop. Most painters say that they don’t stop soon enough; I say most painters need to keep going.

Sawtooth #68

Here are the old scanner and new scanner versions, both before retouching.

The scan was poor, and the painting could use more detail. Some people paint blurry, but I’m not in that club. Not on purpose, anyway.

Here is the do-over and the scan on the new scanner. Still doesn’t look as good as it does in person. You’ll have to trust me on this.

Maybe it’s more evident if I put old and new side-by-side.

The color and detail still aren’t accurate, but it is better.

Sawtooth #69

It was definitely time to replace the old scanner.

Three progress photos for you.

Let’s do a side-by-side before-and-after of this one. And again, the color isn’t coming through very well, so trust on your part is required here.

Thank you, my honest, diplomatic, and wise friend!

Walking Down the Mineral King Road and Up the Nature Trail

Gird your loins—this is a long post.

With my new-to-me iPhone 14 in hand, I walked down the Mineral King Road to Cold Springs Campground (STILL CLOSED—CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN OR SOMETHING!) and back up the Nature Trail. This is about 2-1/2 miles total.

Let’s look at the flowers I found along the road. I actually did this route on two consecutive days and was very surprised by how many flowers vanished and new ones appeared in just 24 hours.

From left to right: mariposa lily—a ruffled variety I’ve never seen before; angelica (not to be confused with cow parsnip because angelica has lacy leaves); buckthorn

This view at the top of Endurance Grade always grabs me. Endurance Hill. Coral Hill. Whatevs. It photographs much better with the phone than it ever did with the camera, as much as it pains me to admit.

Most people prefer the view of Sawtooth. Sawtooth isn’t my favorite, but I paint it over and over because most people like it—they haven’t been medivacked off it*.

I love penstemon, particularly this variety. The color just slays me. Maybe I should learn the actual variety name.

A little past the ranger station, we cross the neglected bridge into the closed (WHY?) Cold Springs Campground. (It’s kind of fun to flick off the flaking paint. No, I am NOT telling you to do that! Why would I tell you to do that? Do you think I’m immature or something?)

Here are some yellow flowers on the other side of the bridge: seepspring monkey flower and false lily of the valley.

At the upper end of the closed (WHY?) Cold Springs campground is where the trail begins. It used to have lots of interesting and helpful signs along the trail. The Park removed them all with the plan of upgrading them, but it has been about 10 years so I don’t think it is a priority. (The Park will say, “Hiring freezes! Understaffed!” to which I have many opinions which I will keep to myself in order to keep the tone of my blog elevated.)

At least the beginning of the trail has a nice sign.

This is a Jeffrey pine, which used to have a sign explaining how to tell the difference between Jeffrey and Ponderosa pines and inviting you to sniff the tree, because Jeffreys smell a tad like vanilla.

Aspens are thick along the trail.

Can you see the trail? It’s definitely overgrown. Last week we saw a trail crew guy and I asked if I could prune it for them. He actually said, “If you want to!”

Blog Reader and Top Commenter Sharon calls this “Iron Falls”.

I finally remembered to put a dime in my pocket so that you can see the scale of wildflowers. I didn’t take into account how: A. difficult it is to photograph the 2 side-by-side with only 2 hands; B. to keep my hideous thumbnail out of the photo (yea for cropping); C. to make the phone focus on the blossom instead of the leaves; D. to actually see the screen. Maybe you are supposed to tap the bloom on the screen, but already being shorthanded, this is beyond my capability.

The little footbridge got rebuilt last summer, or maybe the one before. It all runs together.

More Sawtooth

And just in case you are into Sawtooth (Hi, Kathy Wolfe!), here it is one more time, peeking around the ridge, before the phone battery died**.

OIL PAINTINGS OF SAWTOOTH

WAIT! THIS IS A BUSINESS WEBSITE! Here are some oil paintings of Sawtooth available this summer at the Silver City Store (unless they have sold already.)

Sawtooth #67, 8×10”, oil on wrapped canvas, $165

Sawtooth # 68, 6×6”, oil on wrapped canvas, $75

Sawtooth #69, 8×8”, oil on wrapped canvas, $145

*It was 50 years last week so you’d think I’d be over it. I am, but it still isn’t my favorite. So there.

**This is the biggest disadvantage of using a phone instead of a camera. I also bought a charger, but it only works when it feels like it. The frustrations of tech are endless.

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Gittin’ ‘er dun at the Easel

This painting had the tightest deadline of all the paintings in progress. After a day of doing many non-painting projects, I got a day to paint uninterrupted (except for Jackson).

The edges are painted. It needed to dry, be signed, get photographed, varnished and get rewired from its previous iteration as a horizontal painting.

This is Sawtooth #66, 12×24”, oil on wrapped canvas, $650, located at the Silver City Resort, 4 miles below Mineral King.

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Painting Sawtooth on a Very Hot Day

For those of you who subscribe and read the blog post on your phone: if you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog.

July is very hot in Tulare County, unless you are at elevation. One hot afternoon, I was not at elevation; however, I painted elevation. This did not help the temperature. Neither did the swamp cooler, but it was more comfortable after I blasted my head and face with a hose. (Yep, got hosed.)

Remember this mess? Probably not, because I haven’t shown you yet. This is yet another oil painting of Sawtooth, this year’s winner of Most Popular Mineral King Subject Matter. (for the whole year, but not yet for the Silver City Store, which is selling steadily for me this summer, yet again, thank you Silver City Resort!)

I had an unexpected block of time on a hot afternoon, and after a bit of procrastination, followed by a pep talk (“DON’T BE SUCH A WUSS! YOU USED TO DO FARM LABOR IN THE SUMMER, YOU LILY-LIVERED SQUISHY-MINDED HOT-HOUSE PLANT!”), I went to work.

This is 12×24″, because I was out of 18×36″ canvases. It is destined for the Silver City Store, where an 18×36″ painting of Giant Sequoias currently hangs, aptly and cleverly titled “Big & Tall”. My cowboy logic tells me that this painting is more likely to sell in that location.

P.S. I highly recommend blasting oneself on the head with cold water from a hose on a hot afternoon. It made it possible for me to work until the light was too poor to see, once my bangs stopped dripping in my eyes.

Links to other posts about painting Sawtooth:

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Really Painting Sawtooth Again

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

I really am painting Sawtooth again. In fact, I finished the painting.

Clear, enlargeable photos, along with an operational swamp cooler, good podcasts, and nothing difficult hanging over my head made it easy to just git ‘er dun instead of looking for excuses to stop because it was too hard. Oh wait—must be experience that created the momentum.

See the South Fork Estates sign through the easel? That odd job is completed, which is why there is nothing hanging over my head.

Here is the progression: I have finally learned how to scan and photoshop this size of painting in spite of it being too long for my flatbed scanner. When combined with Photoshop Junior, I can patch the 2 scans together.

This is not that; this is too wet to scan. But, it is finished!! Only took me seven times to get comfortable enough with this scene to be able to stretch it into a 6×18″.

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Are You Really Painting Sawtooth Again?

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Yeppers, another Sawtooth oil painting. Sawtooth is visible from the flatlands of Visalia on a clear day and is the signature peak of Mineral King. It has recently become the most popular of the Mineral King subjects that I paint, and a few weeks ago, someone commissioned another version of the “Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint” view. This is number 8, and the first one in the ratio of 1:3 (6×18″, vertical).

As usual, I started with a scribbly base, and then put in the sky, working my way closer and closer to the front.

Suddenly, I was confused on all those mountain ridges, so I dropped into the stream to pick apart the rocks. I photographed the stream in order to see the rock formations at higher water, before the seasonal growth obstructed my vision. I don’t understand water flow well enough to convincingly make this up.

This represents an afternoon of work, trying to perfect the detail on the first pass, knowing full well that I will need to make corrections as the other parts get completed. And then those “other parts” will need to be corrected.

It would be satisfying to spend as much time on every painting as I am on this one. But paintings don’t require the level of detail that pencil drawings do, it isn’t cost effective, and for the most part, my customers don’t even recognize that level of intense detail. (Not everyone is as near-sighted as I am, albeit it with strong cheater-readers these days.)

Links to other posts about painting Sawtooth:

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Painting More Than Sawtooth

Do you remember that I sold this painting of the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River more than one time at the opening to my show, “Images of Home”?

The second purchaser requested a thicker canvas, so as soon as it arrived, I dove in. (Have you ever noticed that “dove” means both the past tense of “dive” and a bird, depending on how you pronounce it?)

Notice that the redbud are brighter in this one. The colors on our screens don’t adequately reflect the reality of the paintings. At one point I walked to the place in my yard where Moro Rock and Alta Peak are visible so I could clarify a few things that weren’t clear in my reference photos; that was convenient!

I also worked a tiny bit on this painting that has been a difficult project. I took it to the painting session in Exeter where my honest and helpful friends could help me discern some of the weaknesses.

First, I removed the stump that identified the spot on the trail because no one else cares besides me; the point of painting is to make it irresistible to any random viewer, not just painting because it makes sense to me. The fact that it is signed and yet I continue to work on it should indicate my level of desire to make it better – normally after I sign, I stop looking at a painting.

Then I widened that tree where the stump was, taking it out to the left edge of the canvas.

We also decided on these changes: have the light come from the left side instead of the right (or, gasp of horror, both sides), straighten the leaning tree on the right to make it cease pulling your eye out of the picture, add a bit more visible sky, vary the tree sizes, add more branches because real life is messy, and whatever I do, DO NOT TOUCH THE DEER. (That’s because they are tiny and difficult – if it ain’t broke, I ain’t “fixin'” it!)

Still not finished, but definitely better. It needs texture on the tree on the right, light corrections on all the trees (it is on the wrong side of most of them), more branches, a few more skinny trees.

This is artWORK; not artPLAY.

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Almost Finished with the Sawtooth Paintings

At the time of this writing, 2 of the Sawtooth paintings are finished, and the third just needs a small area before joining the others in their finished state. I had leftover paint on my palette, so I painted the edges. This made them a bit too wet to handle, so #3 had to be on hold for a bit.

As I show you these photos of the paintings in progress, I get more and more confused as to which painting is in what stage; I’m like the mother of triplets who lost the note telling which kid has a mole on his 2nd toe or something else to distinguish them (but I don’t have difficulty in real life because they are 2 different sizes and have an inventory number on the backs).

Sometimes when I look at photos of the finished paintings, I see more things to correct. Unless they are glaring mistakes, I will ignore them. These patient customers would like their paintings sometime, preferably sooner rather than later.

Here – you can see a few more and join me in my state of confusion. This top one is finished, but we are hard pressed to tell in the high contrast sunshine. The 16×20 is finished; the 11×14 beneath it isn’t – look at the trees on the right (middle) side. This one looks finished. I wonder if it is the 16×20 or one of the 11x14s. This one needs mid-ground trees and foreground grasses and flowers. Definitely not finished. This one appears to be finished. When there are grasses and tiny colored dots for flowers, it is finished.

What’s harder? Painting the same scene three times, or trying to sort the photos and show people? Or trying to comprehend a blog post about it? (See? I always have questions!)

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Lots of Sawtooths (Sawteeth? Nah)

Painting the same complicated and difficult picture multiple times doesn’t seem to make it any easier. But, since I have done it before, I know I can do it again (and again, and yet again).

This is the 16×20″ version.

These are the two 11×14″:It takes some discipline to not get too far ahead on each one. Even if I am on a roll, I have to move to the other 2 canvases to repeat a successful rock, tree, texture, or stretch of water. When all are finally finished, I will evaluate each part, decide which painting is the best in that area, and then bring the other two up to the level of the best.

P.S. Who’da thunk that the plural of “Sawtooth” would be “Sawtooths?”

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Tiptoeing Along on Several Oil Paintings

Why tiptoeing? Because it feels slow and careful at this stage, like I am just feeling my way along, trying to be as careful as possible.

First up, Sawtooth, the commissioned oil painting.

Second, rebuild the Kaweah Post Office, also a commissioned oil painting.

Third, plant some grasses. (Oil paint grasses, not fescue or bermuda or dichondra or Kentucky bluegrass or. . .) There was more progress made, but the phone call came that it was time to rescue Piper from the vet, where he got civilized this week. $192. No such thing as a free cat. (Samson cost $132 – he was in better shape to start with.)