More leaves, maybe a few more oranges, and definitely some orange blossoms are all that is needed to complete this little improvement project.
Tulare County’s Best Getting Better
Tulare County’s Best
Whenever I have a show, no matter how many pieces sell, I bring home the rest and wonder why they didn’t sell. Then I think about the ones I’ve had the longest, pieces that I have improved on each time I show them again. How can I make these pieces better?
I did this scene as an 8×10 to test it out. It was the beginning of my phase of painting orange groves with hills and snow-covered mountains, which coincided with my beginning forays into plein air painting. This type of scene embodies the best parts of Tulare County—rural, citrus, foothills, snowy Sierra.
It was fun, but of the quality that caused my dearest and closest (and most honest) folks to ask if I was finished with it. So, I touched it up again, and it Is better. But it still hasn’t sold.
In spite of this little painting’s lack of success, I still love this scene. I painted it again, this time 24×24″. (Sometimes I actually do paint what I love instead of just what I think might sell.)
Now we’re cooking with gas! Brighter colors this time, because as I develop my skills and “voice” as a painter, I gain more freedom to exaggerate and embellish (but within reason, because I am still a leading citizen of Realville).
Three shows in good galleries (well, come on, I know this is Tulare County, so they are non-profit galleries rather than big city pushy money-hungry galleries) and it hasn’t found a home.
Think, think, think, AHA!
First, let’s try a little better living with technology, and tiptoe into the AHA. Using Photoshop Junior, I combined Tulare County’s Best II with a detail from a more recent painting of the same genre.
What do you think now? (almost said, “How do you like them apples?”)
Yeppers, Tulare County’s Best will get even better.
*NFS means Not For Sale, because it isn’t finished yet.
Oops, I Forgot, Chapter Five
The idea was to show you all the paintings in my solo show at CACHE, one per day here on the blog, for the duration of the show. But, I forgot to show you all the paintings of Three Rivers! Today’s painting is the final in the “Oops, I Forgot” series.
MISSING PAINTING #5
It is available on my website store. Here is the link and the price here includes sales tax. (If you live out of state and want to buy the painting, just email me and I’ll sort it out for you.)
This painting is from a perfect photo taken by my friend and drawing student, Rachel on the way home from her job in Three Rivers. Lake Kaweah, Kaweah Lake, I never remember the real name, because around here we simply call it The Lake.
Oops, I Forgot, Chapter Four
The idea was to show you all the paintings in my solo show at CACHE, one per day here on the blog, for the duration of the show. But, I forgot to show you all the paintings of Three Rivers!
MISSING PAINTING #4
It is available on my website store. Here is the link. and the price here includes sales tax. (If you live out of state and want to buy the painting, just email me and I’ll sort it out for you.)
This painting is from several photos taken on the BLM land, sometimes called “Case Mountain”, sometimes called “Salt Creek” in Three Rivers. Those craggy rocks are visible from many places in Three Rivers, appropriately named Comb Rocks because they resemble the comb on a rooster.
P.S. Happy Birthday, Trail Guy!!
Oops, I Forgot, Chapter Three
The idea was to show you all the paintings in my solo show at CACHE, one per day here on the blog, for the duration of the show. But, I forgot to show you all the paintings of Three Rivers!
MISSING PAINTING #3
It is available on my website store. Here is the link, and the price on the website includes sales tax, which is why it is higher than shown here. (If you live out of state and want to buy the painting, just email me and I’ll sort it out for you.)
This painting is from several photos taken on the BLM land, sometimes called “Case Mountain”, sometimes called “Salt Creek” in Three Rivers.
Oops, I Forgot, Chapter Two
The idea was to show you all the paintings in my solo show at CACHE, one per day here on the blog, for the duration of the show.
I told you about my virtual friend named Elisabeth, who posted a beautiful photo on her blog that reminded me of two of my paintings. Here is today’s missing painting, for you, Elisabeth (and my tens of other readers).
MISSING PAINTING #2
It is available on my website store. Here is the link, and the price on the website includes sales tax, which is why it is higher than shown here. (If you live out of state and want to buy the painting, just email me and I’ll sort it out for you.)
This painting is from several photos taken on the upper North Fork Road in Three Rivers.
Oops, I Forgot
The idea was to show you all the paintings in my solo show at CACHE, one per day here on the blog, for the duration of the show.
I have a virtual friend named Elisabeth, who posted a beautiful photo on her blog that reminded me of two of my paintings. I wanted to show them to her and while looking for my posts to show them to her, I realized that I skipped an entire section of paintings!
Looks as if someone could use an administrative assistant, a secretary, a Girl Friday, an apprentice, something. Oh well, I’ve been bumbling along on my own for many years, and so far, no one has died or gotten cancer from my mistakes.
So, here goes:
MISSING PAINTING #1
It is available on my website store. Here is the link, and the price on the website includes sales tax, which is why it is higher than shown here. (If you live out of state and want to buy the painting, just email me and I’ll sort it out for you.)
The Kaweah River runs through Three Rivers, with the North, Middle and South Forks giving the town its name. It is pronounced “kuh-WEE-uh”.
More Sold Oil Paintings
This time I am showing you the complete paintings rather than allowing Blog Boss to squish them into various rectangles and squares that don’t fit.
Sold Paintings This Fall
The pictures of sold paintings stacked up in a file, until I realized that there were more than belonged in a single post. The last time you saw the sold paintings was July 30, so I’m glad that the file wasn’t empty!
This method of showing photos doesn’t allow for them to be seen completely, because sometimes the painting is the wrong shape for the square or rectangle on your screen. Oh well, you get the idea, yes?
There will be more next week.
Too Much
My first blog post was April 15, 2008. Since then, I’ve posted over 4000 times, and my “media library” has around 19,000 pictures.
Tech is continually updating, which is just a euphemism for “complications”. Stuff that used to be easy becomes more difficult. Companies that used to sell products (virtual products in this case) outsource their services to other countries, where people can work from home on the phone, while practicing their English. Services that used to come with the virtual products now cost money.
Programs that used to be bought on a disk to get installed in your computer became available only through the interweb airwaves. Then, they became outdated, stopped functioning, and updates started to cost money. Next, you have to subscribe instead of owning the program (now called “apps”, short for “applications”). The price starts out small, but incrementally increases.
The pressure to buy continues to increase, often built on the fear that you might lose your information.
This is happening with my website. I’ve had four or five web designers, and each one either quit working for him/herself* and went to work as an employee of a company that charges 2-3 times as much, or quit to have a baby.
Now I have to pay to get help, pay to protect my information from getting stolen, pay to store my information, and pay to protect from getting invaded by anonymous creeps.
IT’S ALL TOO MUCH!!
So, I am now deleting all my old photos and old posts. Nobody cares, so why am I keeping it stored in some virtual cloud, paying some mysterious company full of advertisers, fear-mongers, pushy sales people, and strangers from even more companies to protect it all?
So, here I go. . . trash, delete, trash, delete.
I wonder if anyone will notice? I wonder if anything will improve on my site? I wonder if I will be able to back it up without getting an error, a message that I don’t have enough space, a warning that my whole site might “crash”, and someone with a difficult-to-understand accent telling me I will need to rebuild my entire website from scratch?
I just came here to be an artist, to depict the things and places that we know and love, and to show and tell you about them.
Okay, back to the virtual dump. . . thanks for showing up today and listening to all this.
*Nope, not going to use a plural pronoun for a singular situation.