These oil paintings have their first layer down.
These paintings are dry, scanned, and delivered to their stores. (And in the category of Wishful Thinking, perhaps they are sold.)
These paintings have some minor items added to make them a smidge better.
And writing the longest blog title ever.
Does this look finished to you? It’s not. When I was driving home a few evenings ago, I really studied the way the ridges change color as they recede into the distance.
So, I messed with them again. The differences are subtle, and now that I see it on my screen, I think it might even want a bit more adjusting. (The painting that never gets finished. . .)
Now there are oranges on the trees.
The blossoms popped out on the trees, and there are a few added in the border embellishment.
Now the smudgepot has been refined, the ground is lighter, the fallen oranges are a bit more visible, and there are two more smudgepots in the far distance, too small to see in this photo.
All that remains is a wind machine.
Maybe.
This is representative of Tulare County’s best features, according to me. The weird part is that I compiled the original pencil drawing using photos taken in Lemon Cove and Pauma Valley (in Sandy Eggo County.) I’m not showing you the pencil drawing again in case you are going to tell me all the ways I didn’t match it exactly.
The sky was bugging me, not just because of the uneven brush strokes. It seemed to be the wrong color.
So, I repainted it. Yeppers, better.
Those hills don’t look far enough away.
So, I lightened them and made them duller in color. (a little shiny-wet here)
Then I redid the dirt and the trees.
Prolly doesn’t make much difference from your point of view.
Now I have a list of 12 more things to fix, repair, repaint, relayer, re-detail. My patient customer said she’d like it in April, but didn’t specify a date.
In 1990, I drew the Exeter Woman’s Club. (Yes, that is the correct name—I just work here.) It was part of a set of notecards called Tulare County Landmarks. No one can find the original drawing. All I have is this scan of a notecard with a hole punched in the corner.
The club asked to use the drawing, and had an old scan or some other format, not really up to my standards. But I didn’t mind and gave my permission. (It is rare that people know the copyright law which is that the artist holds the copyright, so I was impressed and thankful that they asked.)
They are celebrating a big anniversary (100 years?) and plan to publish a cookbook. The president of the club and I are longtime friends, and we began discussing the cover of the cookbook. I couldn’t stand the idea of a shoddy reproduction of my old drawing (not that it was great 35 years ago), so my friend went spelunking, unsuccessfully, in all sorts of places trying to locate the drawing.
Because I hit a slow time (feast or famine in the art business), I asked her to send me a photograph so that I could draw it again. She complied, and I dove in immediately on a rainy day.
Before finishing, I scanned it without a background, since that is how I drew it 30 years ago.
Then I drew in a dramatic background and scanned it again.
My friend asked me to make a couple of adjustments, which were easy to do. Here it is in its final form. After growing the new shrubs into a hedge with my pencils, I photoshopped the palm trees because of a strange request to shorten them by 1/4”. (As I said earlier, I just work here.)
I love to draw (But don’t ask me for a freebie, okay?)
P.S. My friend did NOT ask for a freebie—I offered. She did ask for some modifications, and I happily complied.
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.
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. . .
In 1996 or thereabouts, I drew this in pencil. It is a compilation of photos taken in Pauma Valley, Lemon Cove, and maybe even in Ivanhoe and Exeter. For some reason, a reproduction print was still around during my show last fall. It sold quickly, and a friend asked me to paint the scene for her.
I’ve never painted from a pencil drawing before. Since I have experience in the subject matter, and I can still locate most of my reference photos, I said yes. (Everything is easy compared to those miniature faces.)
First pass over the canvas.
Second pass.
Third pass.
I will be taking my time on this since my friend said she would like it some time in April. This remains my current favorite subject matter, and it brings to mind all the phases of favorites that my art has gone through. More on that later. . .
Here are a few thoughts about drawing with pencils. First, have you noticed that when galleries tell the medium used in making a piece of art, they say things like “oil”, “watercolor”, “acrylic”, or “pencil”? “Pencil”???? Isn’t that actually graphite? In a sense, calling a pencil drawing “pencil” is somewhat like calling a painting “brush”.
Never mind.
The drawing has been temporarily removed from the blog because it is going to be a surprise for some people.
When the customers retrieved their pencil drawing with all those little bitty faces, they wanted to know how in the world I was able to make those tiny visages legible.
The way I got those tiny faces was with little itty bitty adjustments while working under a magnifying glass using these tools, working for many hours on nothing but those faces, refining with each pass, turning the photos and the drawing upside down in order to evaluate the shapes, the darkness, the blurry quality, and then mimic what I saw.
That teensy eraser came into being about 5 years ago. (Okay, if it feels like 5, it was probably 8 or 10 years ago.) How were we able to draw without such a tool?? There were other eraser sticks, but none so tiny. We relied on erasing shields to isolate small spaces, which were never small enough. Now, with the Tombow Mono Zero, we sometimes want an even smaller eraser.
Those sharpeners by Blackwing are designed to give a long point, using 2 different blades. First, use the hole on the left for a looonnnng lead (not actually lead—Pb—but graphite). The hole on the right makes an extremely sharp point, unless the blades have worn themselves dull, which mine have. I had to break out my new one, which I had been holding back on using because it cost $14!! For a pencil sharpener??
Since I no longer have one in reserve, it seemed prudent to buy another backup. Now they are $16 on Amazon. SIXTEEN DOLLARS FOR A PENCIL SHARPENER!
Sometimes it feels good to just sketch quickly, without anything other than a Blackwing pencil I usually keep with me, using any available blank piece of paper. It is a different kind of challenge, which is probably good practice.
Yeppers. Time to raise my prices.
P.S. SIXTEEN DOLLARS FOR A PENCIL SHARPENER?? I’m struggling with this concept, which you may have noticed.