All these paintings will eventually be for sale at the Silver City Store, unless they sell here first.
Five New Mineral King Oil Paintings
Painting Mineral King
In anticipation of a busy selling season this summer at the Silver City Store, I am painting like fury to have inventory. If I can get enough small pieces finished ahead of time, then I can return to painting larger Tulare County scenes for the solo show in the fall at CACHE in Exeter.
The most popular scene, assembly-line style for the base coats. Fret not: they will be detailed individually, and I won’t have all of them on display at the same time.
All of these are in various stages of completion, contributing to a sense of chaos and indecision as to how to proceed. It’s just part of the process when one chooses to be a factory, churning out many paintings of the same scenes.
These 6×6″ will be ready to go, once dried, scanned, and varnished.
This one was easier the second time I painted the scene. I’m a little reluctant to look at it side-by-side with the first version in case I decide this one is A. better or B. needs more work.
Finally, I started a 20×24″ painting of a scene shared with me by a drawing student. It looks like a weird abstract in the first pass over the canvas, but you trust me, yes? And you probably recognize the scene in the second photo here.
This one is going to be challenging but very satisfying. I messed with the photo to make it look more like we want to remember the scene rather than just accepting what the camera says. It really is a classic Tulare County vista.
Eighteen Things I Learned in Texas
I learned so many interesting things in Texas about the culture, history, and of course, wildflowers. Here is more, this time in list form. There is even more I could add, but I expect you have a life. Much of it appeared in my Texas travelogue posts: Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six.
COWHIDES IN THE GROCERY STORE?? Yeppers. (The grocery store, called H E B, was ENORMOUS, of course.)
2. Prepping for and laying sod is an enormous amount of labor. Now I know how to do this.
3. Ever seen a 3-D printer? Fascinating. It uses coils of plastic, much like what is in a weed-eater, and follows a preset program.
In about 1-1/2 hours you can have this little item in your hand. (A plastic shark wasn’t what I had pictured for a souvenir of my time in Texas!)
4. Harvester ants are really interesting—their “hill” is huge, and they wear paths in the soil in their labors. They are red and bite, but not nearly as bad as fire ants.
5. This poor photo is of a castle, built next door to friends of my friends. You can read about it here: Unknown Castle.
6. Gas was so much cheaper! (It’s hitting $6/gallon in Three Rivers now.)
7. The speed limit on the freeway was 75. Is it that high in California? If I went anywhere besides Visalia or Exeter, I might know the answer.
8. These are the funniest squishy Tupperware containers I’ve ever seen. N was surprised by my ignorance; I reminded her that we attended a Tupperware party together in the 1980s and told her I hadn’t paid any attention to the stuff since then.
9. Speaking of convenience stores, there is an ENORMOUS truck stop chain in Texas called “Buc-ees“; the mascot is a beaver with buck teeth. It is HUGE. Jee-um asked me how I liked their convenience stores, and of course I replied that everything is bigger in Texas.
10. N and I had fun working our way through a few watercolor exercises in the neatest little book, designed for the purpose of practicing watercolor. (I won’t be switching from oils—it was just for fun.)
11. I relearned how much fun pingpong is.
12. This is the brightest caterpillar I’ve ever seen. I didn’t look it up.
Food
13. I had venison for the first time in many years; also had brisket, which is meat cooked for a very long time; they call it BBQ if it has red sauce on it, the kind that is sort of sweet, which we call “bottled BBQ sauce” around here.
14. My friends (with the sod project) asked me if I liked queso. I said, “Well, that’s Español for cheese, and I love cheese.” Wrong answer. It is a cheesy dip for tortilla chips, just downright scary good.
15. Instead of root beer floats, they often serve Dr. Pepper floats, because Dr. Pepper was invented in Waco.
16. I ate something exceedingly good called “Texican Tamale”. It was at a restaurant called “Mickey B’s”, which apparently is where Randy Travis likes to hang out.
17. Boiled peanuts do NOT sound appetizing, but they are pretty common fare in Texas convenience stores.
18. Finally, I learned how very dear my Texas friends are to me. Travel is such a series of inconveniences, and as I was fixin’ to go, I questioned why I thought it was even necessary, or if it would be worth all the trouble.
It was.
P.S. The seller of the Texas mug refunded my money and then sent me a replacement. Yikes, it is ugly (offends my inner color junkie) and I don’t want it!
Nine Things Learned in May
This month I will publish two Learned posts, this one and a Learned in Texas. I shared several things in my little series on being in Texas but there is still more.
1. If you want to search for a term on a website, on a Mac you can use the command key (clover leaf) with F and you get a search box at the upper right corner of the page.
2. Locks of Love takes hair donations to make wigs for kids and charges the kids. Wigs for Kids takes hair donations and doesn’t charge the kids. Wigs for Kids (I don’t know how they handle gray hair.)
3. Northern Lights! In Washington, Three Rivers, and even in Texas! I didn’t see them anywhere, but CK graciously shared her photo with me.
4. I should have known better than to succumb to the temptation of a Texas souvenir in the form of a fragile item. I wanted to replace a broken favorite mug with one of a similar size (15-16 oz.) and found this on Etsy. I mistakenly thought that this fragile item would be packaged in a manner that it wouldn’t arrive in pieces. Alas, I was disappointed. At least I didn’t have to fight for a refund.
5. I finally learned to recognize the difference between Eastern redbud and Western redbud.
6. ALWAYS save your postal receipt with a tracking number if you have to return something for a refund. Companies are so eager to sell to you, offering “full money-back guarantees”, but if you can’t prove that you returned it, they will balk. Never mind the fact that it arrived at their warehouse—PROVE IT, YOU SUCKER CUSTOMER. And if you order something with that guarantee, call the customer service number to see if it actually works while you still have time to cancel the order. Some places don’t answer the phone if they even have a number to call; many don’t reply to emails or to the contact form on their websites.
7. I had never seen a fossil, somehow missing all the elementary and secondary lessons on the topic. My good friend Jee-um (that’s how “Jim” is pronounced in Texas), a retired geology teacher, sent me one after he learned of my educational deficit! This is an echinoid, but it looks like a miniature starfish to me.
8. “Functional medicine” is a new term to me—it is a way of practicing medicine that gets to the root of the problem rather than just prescribing something to mitigate the symptoms. A friend told me about this, so I looked it up, as one does. The friend told me that there are practitioners in the area, so I looked that up too. Alas, it took me to the chiropractor I already saw, the very one who tried to sell me a $3500 package of all sorts of things that might or might not treat my neuropathy. Sigh. The saga continues. . .
9. No matter how certain I am that a painting is finished, there is ALWAYS room for improvement.
Tomorrow: Eighteen Things I Learned in Texas (Yes, EIGHTEEN, and that doesn’t include all of the things I told you about in my six Texas travelogue posts.
Sold in Spring: 17 Paintings, 3 Pencil Drawings
Sales were slow last year, mostly due to the fact of my three selling locations either being closed or taking a big hit of one sort or another.
This spring, things broke loose, opened up, took off. Have a look! (I may have forgotten some, because I fell out of the habit of keeping track.)
It was the usual blend of citrus, poppies, redwood trees, and Mineral King, with two of the river during peak run-off season. I do have a few other subjects, but these continue to be the most popular. The largest size painting was 11×14 10×30″; most of the buyers were either getting gifts or souvenirs. And people buy paintings of what they have experienced, so I do my best to keep things seasonally appropriate.
The pencil commission of the dog was from some old friends, and I am so touched that they still think of me when they have an art need. (“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”)
The pencil commission of a cabin was the biggest thrill, because it came from a stranger who found me through the internet, and a thrill because drawing cabins in pencil is my strongest skill, the thing I enjoy the most. Paintings sell better, so I will continue to paint. One day I might actually have confidence in my abilities in that department. Always practicing, always learning, and hopefully, always improving. . .
Tomorrow: Nine Things Learned in May
Random Photos of Late Spring
These photos are simply things on my property that I thought you might appreciate. Sometimes it is more enjoyable to look at cats and flowers than to watch paint dry.
Oh no! I took you right back into watching paint dry!
Tomorrow: Sold in Spring
First Mineral King Stay of 2024
On the drive up the hill, I was just astonished by the abundance of yellow flowers, particularly bush poppies, covering the areas that burned in 2021. There were also blazing stars, common madia, flannel bush, and monkey flowers, all yellow. There were some other colors too, but yellow dominated.
I have been working on a painting of a scene, incorporating every cabin below Timber Gap and Empire’s outcropping, in spite of there being no actual place to see everything at once. So, this was a good opportunity to really observe each cabin before all the foliage had leafed out.
I spent several sessions standing in various locations, sketching how each cabin might look in relation to its neighbors.
But I bet you didn’t come to this post to see me go on about my work.
The Mineral King road is still under construction with a fluctuating schedule of closures. As soon as I think I know when it will be open and when it will be closed, the schedule gets rearranged. There were many pieces of equipment parked along the shoulders (such as “shoulders” exist on this road), many piles of dirt, and many places of dropping down to gravel where sections will be repaved. But compared to last summer, it isn’t scary.
Let the summer begin!
Remember
Drawing a Pennsylvania Dog in Pencil
Pencil Pennsylvanian? Pennsyl Pennsylvanian? Pencil Pencilvanian?
Never mind.
His name was Elvis, and some friends of his former owner commissioned me to draw him.
All those inferior progress photos were taken with an inferior phone camera. Here is the finished drawing, scanned, photoshopped, ready for delivery.
More Better Than Befores
And thus we conclude our tour through paintings of Tulare County, better than before. I think one must see the paintings in person to properly appreciate the subtle improvements
Now if you will please excuse me, I have a commissioned pencil drawing to begin.
Tomorrow: Pennsylvania Dog in Pencil