I spent a morning inside that open door, working on the unusual commissioned oil painting.
Let’s do a series of progressive painting photos (the first two appeared on February 27).
The studio sat empty beneath the flowering pear tree.
Pippin waited for me patiently, until he found something more interesting to investigate.
The first half of March was beautiful. Truly beautiful.
Then, it rained and it snowed kind of low (but not at my elevation). So, blossoms fell off trees and flowers got battered. But, it is still green.
Because it is raining while I write this, I am thinking about water. A few years ago, we had a very wet winter after several dry ones, and I became obsessed with watching flowing water.
Here are some of the results. I was quite pleased with the drawings and pretty proud of the titles too. (There were more, but they sold.)
All the unframed pieces are 9×12”.
I’ve had these too long, and this is a slow month. So, for the rest of the month of March, THESE ARE NOW ALL HALF-PRICE! (half of what is written beneath each one here on the blog) See? Reckless.
(Oh hush up, snobby Art World who says art should never be discounted! I’m in Tulare County, and I’m the boss of my art.)
They aren’t on my website, so you’ll have to talk to me in person, text me at five-five-nine-561-7606, or email me at cabinart-at-cabinart-dot-net (both written this way so the cyberjerks don’t mess with me.)
Yes, there will be sales tax.
If they don’t sell, I might just shred them. Ooh, feeling really really reckless!
“Reckless” is a weird word. If one is feeling reckless, one might not remain wreckless.
It is important that we are kind and complimentary to one another in drawing lessons. It is equally important that we are honest.
AH is my friend and also one of my drawing students. Since she owns dogs, she saw something a little wrong in my drawing on the dog with the black head. I own cats (or perhaps they own me, because they are certainly manipulative and bossy), and haven’t had a dog as an adult.
Her suggestion was accurate and helpful.
I made the correction and finished the drawing. (I bet you can’t even tell what was wrong!)
And now we return to my bosses.
While I was waiting to hear if JM approved the house, I began one of the dogs. Just like on the itty-bitty-face drawing, I am leaving a gap between the different subjects to fill in later.
(This picture is overexposed on the left side of the house because my giant magnifying light is washing it out.)
No emailed instructions arrived, but I had time to keep working on the drawing, so I kept going.
Finally, this was as far as I felt comfortable going without further input from JM.
The dogs’ names were Timber and Tahoe, they were part wolf, and that’s all I know about them.
What a treat to be able to draw this, to pay off my old debt, to reconnect with my old friend, and to just use pencils, my favorite medium.
Many years ago, there was a fabulous little place in Lemon Cove called Foothill Fruit. The owner was a terrific baker and sandwich maker, and some mornings I woke up just ravenous for one of her scones and French Roast coffee. I worked there for a few brief months (it used to be necesary to get a second job during my slower winter months in order to pay my taxes—thank you, Sacramento). When I was no longer working there, we were on trade: Trail Guy (his name was Road Guy back then) and I ate, and I would eventually do a complicated collage drawing of her dogs and her home.
I used my film camera to take some photos, and then I did a few sketches. The owner, whom we will call JM, couldn’t make up her mind as to how she wanted her dogs and home depicted. Then, she moved far away.
This debt in the form of an undrawn picture bothered me quite a lot. She and I weren’t close friends, but we were on good terms and enjoyed each other’s company. I couldn’t figure out how to reach her (this was pre-internet), so I filed the notes and photos under “Incomplete Jobs” or some such thing.
At an oil painting workshop in January of this year, one of the participants asked me if I knew JM. Well, saw off my legs and call me Shorty! The participant put me in touch with JM, I dug out the photos, we started emailing, and she approved this sketch.
If I hadn’t just completed that commissioned pencil drawing with all those little bitty faces, this would have been very daunting. However, I was feeling ultra capable and competent at my craft. Cocky, perhaps? Nope, just confident. (Confidence is a smile; arrogance is a sneer.)
I emailed this to JM to ask if there was anything that needed to be corrected. Stay tuned. . .
This painting seemed too bright. After studying it awhile, I decided to only tone down the brilliant green in the distance to push it farther away. (“Push it” visually, not warp the canvas.)
This is after:
Hmmm, that’s a pretty subtle difference, perhaps even dubious*. Might want to try that again later. In addition, the photography colors are significantly different.
Never mind. Let’s move ahead, shall we?
This painting looks scary in its beginning stages unless you happen to see it while galloping by on the back of a fast horse (or see it the size of a postage stamp on your phone).
After these fairly dissatisfactory adventures in oil painting, I returned to my pencils. This one has a story, which I’ll tell you when I know the ending. This is the sketch I sent to the customer to see if it matched her design expectations:
To be continued. . .
These paintings only show on my blog because I can’t remember how to get more than a handful of paintings to appear on the store part of my website. You may call or email or text if you’d like to buy any of these. Use the contact button on my website, because if I type the info in here, the cyberjerks might harass me.
Painting these is almost just as much fun as drawing with pencil, especially when I get to the third pass over the painting, where I get to draw with my paintbrush.
P.S. There is sales tax if you live in California. Figure in $8, and I’ll pay the postage.
After spending a week doing plein air paintings at the beach in October, I could not wait to get home where I could paint waves and the ocean in my painting workshop, where the waves were frozen in motion on photographs. I love those blues and teals and greens and splashing whites, and I wanted to capture that in over-the-top detail.
“Over-the-top” hasn’t quite happened, but I am pretty happy so far. I’ve shown you Pacific Ocean I, II, III, and now it is time for IV, V, and VI.
A friend knows someone with a store somewhere in a town on the California coastline, and she is SURE the paintings will sell there. The store has very limited shelf space, so instead of putting the paintings on little easels like I had envisioned, she said they will need to hang.
That took some searching, but I eventually found something. The choices were to buy a package of 2 for maybe $4, or a package of 100 for $8. After a brief struggle between the frugal part of my brain against the side that doesn’t want to own extra stuff, I ordered 100.
Pacific Ocean VII, VIII, and IX are wet at the time of this writing.
Once again, I am counting my chickens before they hatch, which might be my strongest talent.
I took these photos the first 4 days of the glorious month of March in Three Rivers.
That’s it. Next week we will return to the business of art.