Navels in the Orchard is actually just navels on canvas, another oil painting of Tulare County citrus.
I painted the details working from the back to the front, which means first I painted the items which are the farthest away from the viewer.
Usually I wait until the painting is dry to photograph it. But look at the weather —the sun wasn’t shining, making the wet parts sparkle.
Yesterday I told you that the paintings retrieved from Silver City will be heading to Exeter’s Mural Gallery, which reopens September 19 (TOMORROW!) after a summer-long renovation. (I don’t think they have a website, but their physical address is 121 So. E Street (next door to the former Wildflower Cafe, at the edge of Mixter Park, home of Exeter’s first giant outdoor mural.)
These 5×7 oil paintings on panels got freshened up and will be sold with little easels. I didn’t photograph the process out of respect for my readers who have no interest in miniscule improvements to paintings.
And here is a table full of Mineral King paintings. I painted them quickly, in order to hustle them up the hill for the usually excellent selling month of August at the Silver City Resort. Alas, we had a thunderstorm which caused a lightning strike which began the Coffeepot fire on August 3. So, I brought them home.
They aren’t terrible, but I studied each one and found at least one thing to improve. I started at the bottom left, and here is a photo for comparison. Prolly a useless exercise for you to discern what got improved, but here goes anyway.
And now the entire table-full has been renovated.
You’ll just have to trust me that they are all a little bit better than before. By the end of the day, the light has changed significantly enough that they look different in photos, whether or not they’ve been retouched.
Now they must dry and I must rescan them in order to have a good record of each painting, because OF COURSE they will sell.
The amount of work to prepare for a solo show is astonishing. I’m so thankful that I was given an entire year to get ready for Simply Home at CACHE, opening October 19, 4:30-6:30 PM.
Here is the list of the most recent show prep activities:
After all this thinking, I made a list of the next things to do for the show. It is quite boring. I needed something productive to do that didn’t require decisions, so I vacuumed the painting workshop (dust, feathers, cat hair, spiders, spider webs) and reupholstered my painting chair with duct tape. I work in a classy joint.
I also cleaned my studio because a guest of honor was coming for a working visit. Because the studio is feeling neglected, I started a colored pencil drawing just for fun. Weird, drawing for fun.
The color looks a bit weird here because it was smoky out. So, what’s new? It’s late summer in Three Rivers and that’s normal.
Fridays are usually for Mineral King. We haven’t been able to get there due to the road closure. There are limited times that people can pass through, but it isn’t helpful to only be able to go up at the end of the day and be required to head down early in the morning. (Maybe that will change soon. . . ever hopeful here.) For fire information, you can go here: watch duty or here: inciweb. I can’t seem to find the maps on watchduty using an old iPad, but maybe you can. The Coffeepot fire is called “CAKNP” on inciweb.
Are you curious as to what subject I chose for my third still life? I guess you must be if you are reading this.
COLOR won!!
This is probably too small to see the progression. It was fiddly, exacting, and really fun to mix a bunch of colors that were not landscape greens, browns, and grays.
These are my two final pieces for the upcoming show. “Simply Home” will open on Saturday, October 19 and run through December 29, at CACHE, 125 So. B Street, Exeter, CA 93221.
P.S. Want to know the titles? Blue Bowl, Yellow Lemons, and Cabin Dishes. (I bet you can figure out which title goes with which painting.)
Is there a word that starts with P to substitute for “day”? I could use “process”, but it isn’t accurate enough.
After spending time with Krista evaluating my paintings, I repaired four in one day. (One wasn’t even on the list, but it was bugging me.)
Everything dried quickly to be scanned. Maybe I will have time to do the two more still life paintings before the show opening in October. . . but, maybe not. There are more things happening than I tell you all here. . . will more be revealed??
This painting is inching forward. It wants wildflowers (fiddleneck) next, maybe some distant shrubs.
The book about TB got sent to the publisher/printer and then put on hold because it needed “hyperlinks” in order to be an e-book. Hunh?? I learned how to do this, then after 2 hours, I remembered that the manuscript could not be sent from my laptop because the Mac scrambles the index (Word and Mac are not very good teammates.) This meant a trip to Visalia and 1-1/2 hours of fumbling around on the author’s HP to no avail. Wow, I am clumsy on that machine which is NOT intuitive. We made the good decision to scrap an e-book.
It is bear season in Three Rivers. This doesn’t mean you can get tags and shoot bears; it means that they are active. (Thank you for use of the photo, JM!)
Normally I think pretty long and carefully about what to paint, particularly when trying to build up a solid body of work for a solo show. I know that citrus, sequoias, Mineral King, foothills, and local landmarks are the most likely to sell. After all, I did come here to earn a living, not to just putz around for fun. It ain’t all that fun when it is 103°, painting in a room barely cooled by a swamp “cooler”.
I’m not complaining, just explaining.
This scene kept calling me back, so I finally decided to just paint it, even though it doesn’t really fall into any of the regular categories.
I love to draw with my paintbrushes. If I am listening to a good podcast and drawing, I hardly notice the heat. There will be an enormous amount of drawing with the bark on the trees, the chain holding the swing, all the branches and twigs, leaves, and of course, wildflowers in the foreground.
This tree with the tire swing is a mile or so above my house. I’m painting it because I feel like it.
So there.
Any questions?
I have one for you: WHAT SHALL I NAME THIS??
What’s wrong with this picture?
The downhill lane isn’t convincing, the leafy bush/tree over Guardsman #2 is too yellow and looks like a cultivated roundie-moundie, and the growies in that center lane are too mushy.
All better now.
When it is hot (i.e. “summer”), I prefer to paint in little stages rather than in long sessions. The swamp cooler helps, but it isn’t A/C for sure and for certain.
This might be how it looked last time you saw it. “It” has the working title of “Keep Right”, and I am open to suggestions, because I don’t want to paint the sign that says “Keep Right”, which belongs on the lower left.
I didn’t show the steps between the photo above and the one below. Sometime after I thought it was moving in the right direction, I put another layer of sky over everything in the background. It was a little alarming, and I didn’t take a photo. After it dried, I redid the distant tree trunks, and rebuilt the greens back there. Then I moved to the foreground on the right side.
I was working from a terrible photo that I took through the windshield and then cropped vertically. When I started the painting, I changed my mind and started it as a horizontal painting. This meant that I set aside the printed photo and switched to the terrible one on my laptop. Aha! I see the downhill lane on the left! Now I needed to rearrange things to make sense instead of just slapping lots of greenery on the unknown spaces.
Something might be different in this photo but I can’t quite tell.
I took this last photo when I was tired of being hot.
There is more work to do, but it is beginning to look believable.
Summer lasts a little bit too long for my liking. In early July, I was tired of it. That is an unpopular view, and I accept my status as a weirdo in this regard. However, I soldier onward in the heat, thankful for the inadequate swamp cooler in the painting workshop, and the inadequate wall unit in the studio. When I am finished painting for the day, I stagger into the house and cool off in the most totally excellent central air conditioning.
Sometimes I go walking in the mornings with my good friend. Occasionally we see a garbage bear.
Then I come home and paint.
I added wildflowers to the 8×8″ oil painting of Franklin Falls in Mineral King. They are mountain pride, arnica, and Indian paintbrush. Although they were not in either reference photo, I’ve seen them all at Franklin Falls. Being the boss of my painting, I took artistic license. Here it is, drying on the wood pile stack.
Having finished the smaller paintings destined for the Silver City Store, I returned to building up a body of work for the October-December show at CACHE.
Like most of what I have chosen to paint lately, this isn’t easy. Look at my reference photo, taken from inside the car. Traffic stopped briefly so at least it is focused.
The working title is Keep Right. Although that is very good instruction to drivers heading to Giant Forest in Sequoia as they approach the Four Guardsmen, I am doubting my ability to make the sign look good. Besides, we live in times when people tend to be highly sensitive, spring-loaded in the offended position, so out of deference to those folks, I will think of another title.
Or you can think of another title. . . I’m not easily offended, and love to hear good ideas from my tens of readers, most of whom are friends in real life.
I wasn’t kidding when I said it was hot. Look what happened while I was painting.
Wow. What a sensitive little snowflake. It was only 103° that day.