I didn’t finish these four paintings in one day. I just made a little progress on each one. The color looks a bit off to me in each one, because I used the phone instead of the camera. Well, what did I expect? It’s a TELEPHONE!
This painting now has more light and shadow on the road. Is it enough? Can I be finished now?
This painting has touched up poppies. All that is left is leaves on the skeletal tree and blossoms on the lupine stalks. Maybe.
This painting is a 10×10″ and will become a walnut grove. Maybe. Kind of a difficult subject, but maybe all the practice on the top painting will make this less intimidating.
This 10×10″ painting is also intimidating and will become an olive grove. Maybe.
I said to myself, “Self”, I said, “It’s all hard at first, all intimidating, and it all works out with enough layers. So, keep painting these scenes of Tulare County, and do it with confidence!”
1.Have you ever heard of a leucistic raccoon? I read about it on The Frugal Girl blog in the comments and had to look it up. Leucistic means an abnormal condition of reduced pigmentation affecting various animals (such as birds, mammals, and reptiles) that is marked by overall pale color or patches of reduced coloring”. (But why isn’t it albino??)
2. There is a website with all sorts of information about comfortable shoes for women, recommended according to one’s foot condition. Alas, Barking dogs shoes doesn’t mention neuropathy.
3. While we are on the topic of comfortable shoes, there is a brand I’ve never heard before of shoes with wide toe-boxes. (Have you ever wondered why we squish our toes to a point in shoes? What’s the point?) The brand is Bronax. (I’m still wearing Crocs.)
4. Never let cockleburs get into your hair. NEVER.
5. While wasting time on the internet, I stumbled across this little piece of wisdom. “When you desire, admire, don’t acquire.” It isn’t necessary to own things just because you like them. This is important for those of us who try to keep our possessions to a minimum. I am in that group, because the more I stuff I own, the more stuff breaks (and gets lost).
6. Straw sausages have a weird name: waddles wattles. (Thanks, JC!) (And thanks MB for correcting the spelling)
7. I drive a “three-peddle car“. This charming term came to me from a friend who loves cars, so I am now using it. (Thanks, JR!)
Pencil drawing, “Mineral King From The Bridge”,
8. Theobot is Artificial Intelligence to describe art. I posted a drawing to it, and it came up with 4 paragraphs of flowery gobbledygook. This is one of the paragraphs, and the robot didn’t know to use the article “an” when a word begins with a vowel. It used the word “tranquil” twice in one sentence. (I won’t be using AI for a long time, if ever.) “The background features majestic mountains, their peaks lightly shrouded by clouds or mist, conveying a sense of elevation and the grandeur of a alpine wilderness. The careful shading and attention to detail throughout create a realistic and tranquil scene reminiscent of a tranquil wilderness escape.”
9. A blog reader (Hi Marlena!) told me that Jackson looks as if he might be a Savannah cat. This is a breed I’ve never heard of. I looked it up, and decided that no, more likely he has Bengal in him, because he looks like our former cat Samson. However, Samson was active and liked water, whereas Jackson is fat and grumpy and always hungry.
10. Just for fun, here is a list of about 100 things you can do to boost happiness in your life—The Emotion Machine.com
What’s a “last hurrah”? In this case, it is one final look at some of the reasons that February is my favorite month in the foothills of Tulare County (the flatlands too, because the stonefruit orchards begin blooming, along with trees that line parking lots).
The flowering quince color clashes with the freeway daisies, but Jimmie crack corn and I don’t care.
Fiddlenecks are the first wildflowers of spring around here.
These are in someone’s yard.
Probably a flowering plum (with sorry fruit).
Miniature daffodils in someone’s yardThese daffodils and tiny white lilies with little green dots on their leaves show up faithfully year after year in this same spot.
HURRAH FOR FEBRUARY . . . see you same time next year.
February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.
Three paintings of Tulare County scenery were brought closer to completion on a productive day of painting. Two were fun, and one is still riding the struggle bus.
Not a lot to say about this other than I photographed each step.
It was fun to detail the unusual barn, and now I need to detail the road and lower right pasture.
This painting is really fun. I filled in green around the rest of the poppies, added more green in the lower regions, built the oak tree (needs the beginnings of spring leaves), and put the lupine stalks in place.
I took this painting to a life-long friend for her input. She has a great eye for design and has assisted me in the past. She suggested more of an overarching canopy and more detail on the road (which was also suggested by my friend and blog reader MB). I got this far on the canopy before the light ran out.
Maybe adding tire tracks, more light, and some dirt clods will be all this piece requires before it exits the struggle bus.
Did you know that Tulare County is home to the largest oaks in the country? The valley oak, quercus lobata is not what this big oak tree is. I found this tree somewhere along Dry Creek Road. I didn’t get close enough to know what kind, but I can tell by the shape that this isn’t a valley oak. It is unusually perfect, almost symmetrical, and all without ever having been pruned (except when cattle chew on the lower leaves.)
Sky and distant ridge.
Distant waves of wildflowers, closer blades of grass.
Added wildflowers, a rock, more blades of grass and a few limbs because I couldn’t wait to get to that tree.
Details in the grass, another rock, and details in the dirt.
Finally started on the tree.
Am I finished? Time will tell.
Once it is dry, I will sign it, paint the edges, and either photograph or scan it, so you can see it with its brighter and more accurate colors.
One bright February afternoon, I took a walk in Three Rivers with my friend in Texas. We were on the phone together for the entire 3.5 miles, catching up on many topics, and sending photos back and forth. These are the pictures I sent to her (and a few extras).
Layer by layer, little by little, these two paintings are inching ahead in spite of the Central California artist’s desire to park indoors by the wood stove with a book.
The top one is 12×16″, an odd barn along Dry Creek Road, known as the Homer Barn. The bottom one is 11×14″, some perfect oak tree with wildflowers beneath on some perfect day of driving Dry Creek Road, in Tulare County, California’s flyover country. But don’t forget that we feed the world. (And don’t move here either, because we are all fat, uneducated, poor, and the air is terrible.)
On a cold gray day, I didn’t want to paint. It is much more enticing to sit inside by the wood stove with a book. However, October’s show is coming and when it gets hot in the painting workshop during the summer, I will want to paint even less than I do when it is cold and gray. So, I took my donkey out to get some work done, telling myself that I could just do one color, or one piece, or one layer and quit any time it was just too uncomfortable. Then I turned on the little space heater and began.
This actually had a layer of blue sky before I started on the cold gray day.
Farthest hills first.
Moving closer, not too worried about color exactness.
When this layer is dry, I will relayer everything, paying closer attention to the colors, edges, angles, proportions, etc. At that stage, I will wish I could sign it, but will know better. There are always ways to improve the accuracy on the details, correct colors, and increase contrast in the most important places.
Yea for me. I stayed out in the workshop long enough to get to this stage. Then, I even did another painting. (No trophies required. . . )
Today’s post is a series of unrelated topics, just short glimpses of my little life.
These two paintings were dry enough to varnish, and then I left them in the sun for awhile to set-up. They complete the set of seven paintings painted specifically for Kaweah Arts reopening in March.
These types of skies are one of the reason that I love February.So many clouds look flat on the bottom.
Hi Jackson. I like you when you aren’t complaining.
This painting will take awhile: building up the grasses, enhancing the poppy brilliance, painting the bare oak tree, and finally, painting the lupine.
Took a walking break in the middle of a painting day, because it is February and the sun was shining.
And I puttered around in my herb garden one afternoon.
