Do You Color?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PHEEBS!

The only times I color is when I am doing a little boutique-festival-fair-show-sale – whatever those events are called. Coloring is more fitting than knitting and certainly more approachable than reading a book in between customers. (If I am attending a festival and a vendor is reading a book, I just keep walking past that booth because that vendor clearly does not want to be interrupted.)

I think it might be fun for people to see how the artist of a coloring book fills in those blank pages, and it gives us something to talk about, especially if they are also colorers. (colorists? people who color?)

The only coloring book I’ve worked on so far is Heart of Agriculture. Ag is a colorful subject, and I enjoy the challenge of blending new colors with my limited Blackwing set of colored pencils.

Having several recent shows, I’ve made some progress in the coloring book. I sort of like it with unfinished leaves.

I’ve probably already shown you these, but in case I have new blog followers, here is a rerun. Although the olives are my favorite drawing in the coloring book, I got tired of working with only greens and browns, so I abandoned this one for awhile.

It takes some reining in to keep from spending 400 hours per page. Good enough is good enough in a coloring book, dontcha think?? And at this current pace, this one coloring book alone could provide show time-filler for at least another decade.

TODAY’S FEATURED PAINTING AT ANNE LANG’S EMPORIUM: 

Too Random, Need a List

Too much variety means all of this could take up multiple posts, so a list will be the best approach today.

  1. There are now many new paintings listed on my website – For Sale–Oil Paintings–Landscape. If you sort by newness, you can see them.

    Honeymoon Cabin #28, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas, $100
  2. I finally finished coloring the grapes in my coloring book Heart of Agriculture.
  3. I started 2 other pages in the same coloring book. The ag coloring book is fun to me because there are so many colors besides just normal landscape colors. (The plum is light colored because that is how plums look hanging on the tree. The white stuff is called “bloom”.)
  4. I found a web designer! I will withhold comment until the job is finished, but so far, I am impressed. 
  5. It was good to be at Anne Lang’s for First Saturday February; I’ll return for First Saturday March.
  6. February is International Correspondence Writing Month. Ever heard of that before? There is even a website! They call themselves (who are “they”??) InCoWriMo

Coloring Simply

When I paint, I use only the primary colors, a manner called the “double primary palette”. This is because it has 2 yellows, 2 blues, and 2 reds. (White doesn’t count and the purple at the end is a mix I always make when I begin painting.)

This is a colored pencil version of that simple collection of colors.

You may recall that I bought a box of 12 colored pencils recently and really liked the way they work. My favorite non-drawing pencils are Blackwings, so I was eager to try their colored pencils. You may also recall that I thought it was too bad the box only held 12 colors, 2 of which aren’t very useful to me – black and silver. This box does not contain the double primary palette; although there are 2 blues, there is only one red and one yellow. (2 greens don’t count because green is not a primary color.)

On the January Three Rivers First Saturday, I hung out at Anne Lang’s Emporium with coloring books and oil paintings. While I was in between visitors, I experimented with the Blackwing (weird – shouldn’t these be called “colorwing”?) colored pencils. Could I create the full range of colors as if I had one of my sets of 120 (either Polychromos or Prismacolor)? 

Here are the results. 2 of the grape clusters, part of the trunk and a few of the leaves were colored with the large set of pencils. The rest was done with only 10 colors from the box above.

Nice, eh? Layering and layering and layering. . . still lots of white paper to be covered here.

P.S. This page is from the coloring book Heart of Agriculture, and I haven’t found the hidden heart yet in spite of the fact that I am the one who drew this picture.

P.P.S. The colored pencils are available on this site: Pencils.com The wood is California cedar, the company is in Stockton, and the pencils themselves are manufactured in Japan. They are $19.95 for a set of 12, plus all the usual add-ons like exorbitant sales tax and shipping.

Merchandise and Marketing Sense

Christmas is coming, and if I had any marketing sense, I would have been telling you about merchandise that is available all through the month.

I do have sense, and I sense that it would be irritating for me to keep pounding the sales drum. However, if you need a reminder or an easy idea for a gift, and I said nothing, I would have neglected my duty to serve you, my readers.

Choices and consequences. . . here we go. . .

  1. coloring books: there are 5 designs available. Heart of Agriculture, Heart of the Hills, Heart of the Parks and Heart of Exeter are $15; Heart of Mineral King is thinner so it is $12. They are available here: Coloring Books
  2. The Cabins of Wilsonia: the price has been reduced to $50. They are available here: The Cabins of Wilsonia
  3. 2018 calendar: all gone.
  4. pencil drawings: plenty of these available, both originals and reproductions too, some framed, some not. (Did you know I love to draw?) Pencil Drawings
  5. oil paintings: landscapes, still life, lots of sizes, 27 19 paintings available at last count (which could be fewer by the time you are reading this). Oil paintings
  6. notecards: lots of designs available (I still write by hand and use stamps and the U.S.Post Office – do you?) Notecards
  7. commissions: too late for this year, but there are always gift certificates. You may use the contact dealie or email me using cabinart at cabinart dot net (someone smart in computerizing told me to always write it that way in the blog. . . I just work here.)
  8. ornaments: there is no page to sell these ornaments, but there is a story here. There are 2 that I painted like the one for the White House 10 years ago, as seen in the photo above (the center one is sold). The one on the far left is $150 (plus tax) SOLD, and the one on the right is $75 (plus tax).

P.S. If you live in the area, we can figure out a way to exchange currency for merchandise in person. If you don’t live in the area, I believe in using the U.S. Postal Service, accept checks in the mail, Paypal and can use Square.

Walnuts in My Art

Do you like walnuts? When I was a kid, I thought gleaning was punishment, in spite of being paid a king’s ransom of 25¢ a bucket. There were always stinging nettles on the ground, and it was boring. Then, I would say to my poor mama, “WHY do you have to put walnuts in EVERYTHING??”

I grew up. 

Look at the walnuts in my art. These are only the ones that I saved photos of; I did two other pencil commissions with walnuts before I had a digital camera, a computer and a blog.

This won a prize in the Madera ag art show AND, this is bigger to me, it sold. The title: “With, Please”.
A friend commissioned me to paint seven 2×2″ oils of important crops in California. Left to right, top to bottom (in case you can’t figure these out): fig, apricot, navel orange, lemon, valencia orange, walnut, almonds. (Hi, Craig!)
This pencil drawing was commissioned earlier this year as a gift for the retiring farm manager. (Hi John! Were you surprised?)
This page is inside my coloring book, “Heart of Agriculture”.

Heart of Agriculture is available here.

Oh Mom, do I HAVE to put walnuts in EVERYTHING??

Testing a Coloring Book

Designing coloring books involves drawing, my favorite thing. Coloring the pages is for other people to do.

But, I got curious. So, I gave it a try in the ag coloring book, Heart of Agriculture: Celebrating Tulare County Farm Bureau’s First 100 years.

This is as far as I got on the title page. I filled the letters in with blues, because there is very little blue in agriculture unless you drive a New Holland Tractor. (Cats are yellow, Massey-Ferguson are red, John Deere are green: I don’t know about Kubota or Mahindra or International Harvesters.) Couldn’t decide on the cow – dairy? beef? Reddish? Black Angus?

And this is the beginning of the citrus page, one of my favorite designs in the book. I don’t know why I started at the bottom of the page. Look – more blue! It makes the yellows and oranges look brighter.

This stuff is time-consuming. I think it is probably the most fun for people who don’t draw or paint (or knit). It would be a fun group activity – a bunch of friends sharing conversation, ideas and colored pencils or markers. A bowl of M&Ms would be appropriate too. . . dark chocolate, if I’m there.

You can get the Heart of Ag coloring book at the Three Rivers Mercantile, Rosemary & Thyme or the Mural Gallery in Exeter, or on my website here. And, of course, if you see me around somewhere, I almost always have some in the trunk of my car, along with many of the other books I’ve published. (coloring books and The Cabins of Wilsonia)

Heart of Agriculture

That is an apt title for today – a nod to both Valentine’s Day and the World Ag Expo’s opening day in the title of my latest coloring book.

This coloring book was published in partnership with the Tulare County Farm Bureau, a delightful group of people to work with (in spite of their rejection of pomegranates).



There is a tiny heart hidden in every picture, even this one:

This is my favorite:

 

And this might be the most fun to color:

The coloring book for grownups has 20 colorable pages and is $15 including sales tax. (If the Paypal button charges you tax, I will send you a refund.) If you prefer to pay with a check, I accept those in the mail to Cabinart, PO Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271. If you like to cheat a little, you might be able to print these pages from the blog, but I don’t know how and am not going to instruct you in this.

The For Sale pages work now, unless you are using Firefox for your browser. (I think that is the only one that doesn’t work with my site.) Here is a link to the Heart of Agriculture page. Tap or click here, depending on your device.

 

Heart of Agriculture

 THIS IS THE COVER OF THE NEXT COLORING BOOK!

0-front-cover

AND THIS IS ONE OF THE INTERIOR PAGES!

17-cotton

Yes, there is a hidden heart in every picture, even this one. I did my best to not have to draw cotton, but the customers (plural – there was a committee) requested it in spite of my explaining that it would be boring to color. So, I drew cotton, lots and lots and even more!

The coloring books are not yet ordered, but when they are, I’ll add them to the website, under the For Sale, then Books, then Coloring Books. There will be 20 colorable pages, and the price will be $15.

Thank you, Tulare County Farm Bureau, for the opportunity to draw the agriculture of this place that feeds the world!!

 

New Coloring Book in Progress

A few weeks back I told you that I am working on a new coloring book for grownups. (I use the childish sounding word “grownups” instead of “adult” because of the negative connotations on the internet with the “a” word. We wouldn’t want anyone to jump to conclusions about the appropriateness of my coloring books, would we?)

I am working with a committee on this project. If there are 5 people on a committee, there might be 6 opinions. Here are some coloring book pages that won’t be appearing in the new book.

pomegranates
Pomegranates are not a large crop of Tulare County.
cows
There is a dairyman on the committee who will supply me with photos of his cows.
rows
Someone on the committee said this looks like the midwest. I replied, “The photos came from Strathmore!” Still didn’t fly.
tractors
These tractors are too antique for the committee’s taste. That is why they are so cute.

This sort of thing is just part of the business of art. Every situation is a new set of challenges. Often I don’t anticipate things, such as my main contact getting overridden by a committee. Who knew to ask such a question? This project is so fun that I dove in fast, rather than thinking through of all the “what ifs”.

I ought to guess these things in advance and bid jobs higher in anticipation of such potholes or speed bumps or detours.

But I don’t consider these pages as a waste – I was practicing my ability to convert photos into coloring book designs, practicing my design abilities, and maybe someday I’ll find a way to turn these into a special coloring book.

Yes, I am stringing you along, not telling you what the project is or who it is for. You may be able to guess. . .

Speaking of Coloring Books

Who was speaking of coloring books?

I was. Yesterday. I said that I thought about skipping a calendar this year because I was so busy with coloring books.

I am at work on #5 now. I haven’t cleared it with the customer to reveal their identity (yikes, I just used a plural pronoun. . . never mind, this isn’t supposed to be about my editing skills).

However, I will show you the beginnings stages and one of the new drawings.

first-page

olives

Doesn’t this look hard to color? It is supposed to be challenging – these coloring books are for grown-ups.

That’s a little weird. Real grownups need to wear magnifying glasses to see these sections!