Peculiar and Annoying

My website/blog is being peculiar, and now I am being annoying by bothering you twice in the same day.

Several of my blog subscribers have let me know that the photos aren’t showing up. In addition, many spammers are slamming my email with unwanted solicitations through the contact button. Then, the “platform” that the site is built upon “migrated” everything to a new location in the stratosphere. (I have no idea what all this means). The cherry on top of this mess is that my web designer closed his business to take a regular job; an employee is taking over some of his clients (ME! PICK ME!!) but she is overwhelmed and thus somewhat nonresponsive at this time.

(I’m fine, just fine, thanks, why do you ask??)

If you are a subscriber, how about following the link in this email to the website. If it doesn’t show the photos on the blog post, go to this link and resubscribe: Jana’s Blog  

If you have trouble, please email me. I have disabled the contact form so IF my link above takes you to the correct version of my website, you will not have a form to fill out. (and neither will the Spanner Slammers). But since your Central California artist is trying to navigate this all by her lonesome, it may or may not solve the problem. As with everything, more will be revealed.

Thank you for reading through this annoying information about my peculiar website. You may resume your nap now.

P.S. Sometimes the titles of the blog posts don’t show; other times there are weird spots in the titles because the word “cabinart” is going over the top of the titles in white, which matches the background and further confuses the viewer. (I just work here. Sort of.)

 

Drawing Lessons Are For Learning to Draw

Mrs. Customer (of the indoor murals) said to Mr. Customer, “I think you should sign up for Jana’s drawing lessons”. Mr. Customer said, “I would be too embarrassed”. 

I said, “Many people have that worry; the reason for lessons is to learn to draw. No one knows how before they take lessons; everyone starts out the same. My students are all very kind and encouraging.”

Every bit of that is totally true. 

One day a drawing student said she didn’t know what to draw next. She was wearing her normal black high-top sneakers, and the late afternoon sunlight was coming in the doors of the gallery. We put her shoes in the light and photographed them with her phone from many angles. Now she is drawing her shoes, and we are wishing we had stuffed the laces inside rather than having to sort out all the loops and droops.

The first step is to figure out what to draw; the second step is to get a printed photo. Yes, you can draw off your phone, but it is easier to work from paper, which is a fixed size. You can see that she is enlarging the shoes on the drawing, which is an important way to learn to see proportionally.

Do you want to learn to draw? You can. The only people who don’t learn are the ones who quit too soon. Not everyone enjoys the process, not everyone enjoys everything. (I can’t stand sports.)

11 Things I Learned in December

  1. Alma mater is not Latin for someone’s mama named Alma. It actually translates as”nourishing mother”, so it refers to the university (mother) at which you studied (were nourished), and more commonly, from which you graduated. Good grief, I have 4 alma maters. Wait – was I “nourished” by each one? I can’t remember specifics, but must have learned something. That was well before I started keeping these handy lists.
  2. Discipline-based art education is a way to learn about art in 4 areas: A. production, B. Criticism, C. History, and D. Aesthetics. The approach was formulated in the 1980s by the Getty Foundation and was a departure from the “creative self expressionism” that dominated when I was in school. If it had been taught this way, maybe I would have finished a 4 year degree. A friend told me about this (Thank you, DM!) but I haven’t found a site that explains it as clearly as he did.
  3. All those lines that I’ve been noticing in the sky are called “chemtrails” , the result of something called “geoengineering”, which is atmospheric experimentation and manipulation by covert aerosol distribution. Some document from NASA, written in 1966, indicates that such environmental shenanigans have been going on since the 1940s. I am beginning to think there is a conspiracy here, one to hide and pretend that this is not happening. To question it is to be dismissed as a “conspiracy theorist”. Good grief Charlie Brown. How totally creepy. Maybe you can understand more than I do if you choose to follow these links: Alachua County, Europe Reloaded, Geoengineering Watch.
  4. Almost all large companies hide behind phone trees (except L.L. Bean); they experience an “unusually high volume of calls” at all times; they now have the convenient excuses of Covid and supply chain trouble; they say that they value your business; most offer a call-back option instead of waiting on hold; none of the ones I have tried to connect with ever called back. Anyone wondering why I didn’t want to get a computer, email, a website, or a cell phone? Too bad; this is life as we now know and live it. 
  5. Related to #4, I relearned that in order to get big companies to do the right thing, IF you ever reach a human, you must be firm. If you act angry, ask to escalate the call, maybe even raise your voice and tell them what they are “offering” is completely unacceptable, they usually come to see the truth. WHY WHY WHY is this necessary? Buy local, buy used, borrow, refurbish, and avoid big box stores. Take the road less traveled.
  6. It is very hard to buy things in stores because many don’t carry items for sale, but only for display. If you want to buy something, they write it down, ask you for all sorts of personal information, put it into an iPad, have you verify the information, enter it into a computer, ask for more verification. They charge for shipping the item to their store, for delivering the item to you, for setting up the item for you, and of course for sales tax. They call to say they will deliver on a certain date, they call again to tell you what time and ask you to call back to confirm, and then you get tangled up in the branches of their phone tree. If you can’t get through to confirm, they reschedule and it starts all over again. I had no idea that this is how it “works” now. Anyone wonder why I avoid shopping, keep my things for decades, and prefer thrift shops?
  7. A friend sent a link to a wonderful song. It comes with photos that go along with the lyrics, but the music alone is enough for me. Holy Now by Peter Mayer.
  8. My wedding ring needs to be resized. I needed to take it off, which took awhile with lots of dish soap. There is a permanent dent in my finger, and now I am a little bit afraid to put it back on. Is my finger fat, muscled, or have my knuckles grown? I vote for muscled. . . all that knitting, typing, drawing, painting, weed pulling. Maybe in January I can learn about where to get this done. 
  9. This was to be the year that I made Hoshigaki persimmons. I learned 3 things: A. make SURE they are firm; B. make SURE they have stems to tie the string around; C. DON’T put a persimmon on either end of one string to counterbalance when they hang because if the string gives way on one, both will go splat. Perhaps I will have success with this peculiar, time-consuming and delicious way of drying persimmons next year.
  10. Sawtooth as viewed from the former Sunnypoint Campground in Mineral King, with rushing water in the stream and wildflowers, all exaggerated from the real view in real life is one of people’s very most favorite scenes I have ever painted. Number 6 is now on the easels.(This is #5).
  11. We have gotten more rain in the month of December this winter than in the entire previous rain year! (I think a rain year begins with July). I sure hope we are allowed to have it for irrigation, etc.

 

Ten Truths of Life List

(More weird lines in the sky when no jets have flown overhead)

Lists are a regular tradition at the end of a year. People list things that happened, celebrities who died, accomplishments, goals for the next year, resolutions, words to live by, on and on. . .*

I’ve been thinking about truths of life. Writer Anne Lamott has a famous list, and you can hear her explain them on a very good TED talk. Her list made me think about my own.

Here are some truths that I know and can count on. 

  1. Life is better with a cat.
  2. Almost everything in life is a mix of good and bad—life may be better with a cat, but eventually the cat dies; social media is a sewer, but it is also a place to keep up with your modern (and often puzzling) nieces and nephews.
  3. The two best ways to spend time with friends are working on a project together or taking a walk.
  4. There are no perfect friends; no single person can meet all your needs.
  5. The more stuff you own, the more stuff breaks (and gets lost, dirty, or messed up and wastes your time in maintaining it).
  6. Gardening is war.
  7. “Upgrade” and “update” are euphemisms for “complications”. 
  8. “Educated” and “smart” are not synonyms; knowledge does not equal wisdom, and information does not guarantee discernment. In the same vein, common sense has become quite uncommon. 
  9. My approach to sweets: if it isn’t chocolate (dark), it probably isn’t worth the calories.
  10. Beauty is a need, and it is something that has no danger of an overdose.

Sincerely,

Your List Lady AKA Central California Artist

*A list from the past before I started doing those end of the month Learned Lists (because search engines like links in blog posts): 2016

 

Day Five on Indoor Murals

On Day Five I finished the trumpet vine. 

Next I went downstairs to begin the third mural: boulders with lichen, grass, and wildflowers, along the staircase.

Before I started, I went outside to look at boulders in order to mix the right shades of gray.

Look upstairs!

Lichen will be a challenge. I might need to buy some smaller brushes. Look at how I wish it would turn out:

Hmmm, as with many of my projects, this feels a little bit too hard. This is how it looked when I started getting stupid at the end of 6 hours of painting.

 

Day Four on Indoor Murals

I forgot my good brushes at home. I thought about calling Trail Guy to bring them to me, and I thought about going back home to get them. Since I was the one who messed up, I didn’t want to mess up TG’s day; I also knew that if I drove back home, I’d find a reason to not go back to work. It is hard to leave home any day; on cold wet days it is even harder to leave, so leaving twice in one day was a bit much for this lazy Central California artist.

Since I wasn’t getting into tight detail yet, I decided to just use inferior brushes. No need to wear out the good ones on base layers.

The Customers and I decided that the leaves and blossoms were too small, and that the trunk would need to be wider and also to cross around the corner to the left.

I poured 3 greens onto the paint bucket lid that doubles as a palette. The greens have been mixed from the primary colors, and are very useful to have ready to go, so I always have several on hand.

Mr. and Mrs. Customer and I discussed my not having found good photos of the trunks of trumpet vine. They went to work on locating some photos, and then Mr. Customer taped them to the door.

I finished the leaves and poured out some reds, oranges, and yellows, along with a bit of white. The photos helped, although I don’t copy what I see. The specifics rarely fit exactly, paintbrushes are NOT pencils, and inferior paintbrushes are definitely not able to do the kind of details that I love. So, I pushed through some base coating to locate clumps of flowers.

On the next painting day, I WILL remember my good brushes and will detail this into shape. Just seeing the photos here on the screen gives me ideas of how to make this better.

Day Three on Indoor Murals

The goal for Day Three was to finish the wisteria and begin trumpet vine over the doorway.

The right side needs to be finished.

Then I moved back to the beginning because it takes awhile to learn how to paint a new subject, and by the time I get to the end, I have more knowledge and then have to revisit the earlier portions to make some additions and corrections.

It was a dark day, so the wisteria was too hard to photograph in full.

Next, the doorway into the room will have trumpet vine. I didn’t have the right colors, so I used whatever was on the palette to begin drawing.

This gave the Customers and I a chance to see if I am on the right track in meeting their vision. Mr. Customer has a good eye (well, I think both of his eyes are fine, but you know what I mean) and explained how far around the left edge he wants the trunk to go and how thick he would like it. Mrs. Customer would like the flowers to be life-sized, so now I know what to do when I return for Day Four.

Day Two on Indoor Murals

Why does the title say “murals” instead of “mural”? Because there will be more in this location.

I started with the hardest one of the four because there will be new flooring installed in this room next week. So far I haven’t spilled, dripped, or dropped a brush. I am making a conscious effort to be very neat, and so far I haven’t wiped my brushes on my pants once! I decided that an old pair of jeans could become my painting pants, and while I am okay with getting paint on them, I am trying to break the habit of using them as a paint rag.

Here is the progression on Day Two. 

I began on the left side, filling in behind the blossoms from Day One because it didn’t have enough depth. Then I painted in a few “strings” toward the middle. If I put in a vertical line as a stem, I can build the blossoms around it.

You can see more blossoms happening toward the middle of the vine here. I had high hopes of finishing it in two days, but hadn’t taken into account the filling in of Day One’s work.

It seemed like a good plan to put background blossoms in first – a bit lighter, a bit bluer in color, and somewhat blurry.

The closer blossoms have darker and lighter colors with more parts, including a bit of greenery. (Yes, I know it is hard to tell in these little dark photos.)

About 6 hours of painting straight is my limit. Much longer and my work starts getting sloppy. (Might even accidentally clean my brush on my pants.) So, I got off the ladder and put dirt and grass at the base of the vine. This way, if the Customers decide to move the bed, the vine won’t just drift off into Quitsville.

I wonder if I will be able to finish this on Day Three. As I move out to the right side, there will be fewer blossoms, with the heaviest concentration in the middle. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. You will probably learn about this some time next week.