The view of a family cabin from the Mineral King bridge with Farewell Gap in the back and the stream in the front is the most popular scene that I paint of Mineral King. Sales have been brisk, and I am trying to get some inventory ready to go. So, instead of just hanging out in Mineral King, I did some work.
First, I started painting without the easel. It is annoying to set up, and I just wanted things to be easy.
Then I changed my mind. It seemed possible to set up both paintings side-by-side on the easel, which would make it worthwhile to hassle with the easel.
Yeppers, this works.
After awhile, the paintings felt too hard. I was looking at about 6 different photos, getting confused about which one to follow for which part on which canvas. Which which which. Time for a break. I walked to the bridge and sketched the various ripples, rocks, and willows, which all showed because the willows weren’t leafed out yet.
Now I have a map to follow whenever I paint this scene.
Finally, I set it up to dry so that I could get it home without incident.
I’d rather not work while in Mineral King, but if I cannot hike, I might as well be productive. And it is pretty handy to go see the real scene instead of relying on photographs.
There was a fair amount of puttering, cabin maintenance, hanging out with neighbors, a few short walks, and some painting on my most recent stay in Mineral King.
Because I needed to complete two more paintings of the iconic scene of the Crowley family cabin with the stream and Farewell Gap, I spent some time studying the water and a few details that often elude me. Customers don’t care or notice, but if I can’t get it right after painting the scene well over 60 times, then I am a little concerned for my own ability to pay attention.
Classic Mineral King
The snow was holding on the peaks and passes. We strolled up the valley toward Crystal Creek.
Crystal is very wide, but easy to cross, especially if you do it my way, which is to just walk right through.
Chihuahua Creek was running strong. This is a seasonal creek that races down the pack station road most years. The trail crew put in a very effective water bar last fall, so now the mud on the road is due to seepage, rather than an errant stream.
Speaking of the pack station, someone asked me about it last week. The short version is that the last concession packers in Mineral King got sideways with the Park, there were lawsuits, and then silence. It was a long time ago (15 years? 20?) No more horse rentals. Now the Park brings up stock as needed to resupply trail crews or just to get the critters out of the heat. They have a tack shed, and there are two abandoned buildings from the previous packer. That’s all I know.
In addition to studying the water at the bridge, I photographed the trees on either side of the Honeymoon Cabin, a mini-museum maintained by the Mineral King Preservation Society. The cabin is the second most popular subject that I paint of Mineral King, so it behooves me to know the details.
Juniper
I took a short walk up to Spring Creek. There is a very appealing curve in the stream below, but I will have to do some rearranging in order for it to make a nice painting.
The bridge was not in, but on the way home on Monday, June 3, we passed a couple of Park guys on their way up to place the bridge.
We took a stroll one evening to enjoy the late light, cool temperatures, beautiful views, and quiet.
On the way down, we encountered this:
Ken wore a hat that read, “Dirty Hands, Clean Money”.
The road has great wildflowers, lots of dirt sections, and is quite passable. BUT, you should be prepared to wait, and be prepared to meet 10-wheelers and other construction vehicles.
By “large”, I mean 18×36″ and 20×24″. By “iconic”, I mean these are familiar and much loved vistas of Tulare County.
I bet you can guess the subject of this 18×36″ painting.
Paintings start out so sloppy, but I am finally used to it and not worried when I start a new one.
This was too tall for me to reach the sky, so I flipped it upside down.
Sometimes I wonder why I even look at photos anymore when I paint this scene. Then I do something complicated such as trying to combine two different photos, and then realize that one was taken in morning light and one taken in the evening. This doesn’t work out well.
When beginning a new painting, shapes keep getting corrected and moved and resized. Eventually there is wet paint over the entire canvas, and anything I attempt just smears. When that happens, I move to another painting.
Lake Kaweah is VERY FULL right now. VERY FULL.
I enjoyed mixing the colors of the clouds and the distant mountains. They were fun to detail, but I know they aren’t good enough. Yet.
Although I am using a photograph, I might have to do some altering in order for the clouds to be believable. The sky needs another layer too. I wonder if the lake could use a houseboat or two or seven. Lake Kaweah with Moro Rock, Alta Peak and Castle Rocks in the distance is a very iconic scene in Tulare County. It wasn’t on my list to paint for the upcoming solo show until a friend showed me a beautiful photo she took on her way home from work in Three Rivers a week or two ago. She graciously offered to let me paint from it, and I started this painting the very next day.
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.
Clockwise from upper left: White Chief, Alpenglow on Farewell Gap, View from the Bridge, Sawtooth.
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.
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!
The blue on the Texas is faded and pink looks so wrong.The blue is beautiful and perfect with the interior of the mug.
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.
Eastern redbud on the left; Western redbud on the right
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. . .
Did these shoes wreck my feet back in the ’70s and ’80s?
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.
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. . .
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.
This honeysuckle grows on the side of my studio and smells heavenly when the door is open. (Stop scratching your screen!)
I sowed some poppy seeds with an expired date on the package. So far two have been white, or perhaps cream or light yellow.
Jackson doesn’t care about the late season brodiaea but seems to be entranced by something that he might want to kill. This variety is called elegant brodiaea.
The piecemeal fence in the herb garden has needed paint for a couple of years. If I had done it earlier in the season, I would have been able to reach all the parts that are currently covered by growth.
Oh well, it is better than before, as long as the plants hide the unpainted portions
Oh no! I took you right back into watching paint dry!
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.
This is actually looking back downhill.
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.
View looking uphill from Lookout Point. The tip of Sawtooth is barely visible, but you can see that Sawtooth is still snow-covered.
Farewell Gap is also very snow-covered.
This is the stream by the Honeymoon Cabin.
The Nature Trail has some snow drifts.
The Spring Creek bridge is not in, but someone went snooping around and found a metal plank and placed it below where the stream divides.
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.
