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This rooster oil painting hung around for awhile. Almost immediately after it (finally) sold, someone requested another, along with 2 little square paintings of hens.
That’s a fairly good beginning. These won’t take too long to complete, and then I can return to the odd job.
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My current odd job is simply a painting of a mountain landscape. The odd part is that I am painting it 16-3/8″ x 29-7/8″ on a piece of Masonite.
After Trail Guy cut it, I covered it with 5 or 6 coats of flat white housepaint, sanding between each layer for a smooth surface.
Meanwhile, I studied the two photos, provided by the customers.
Neither one is the right proportions. Each has its own good points, so I combined them into a rough sketch, the proportions of the window opening and board. This is what I sent to the customers for approval.
The customers were very happy, so I sketched it onto the board.
Then, I put a very thin first layer over the white primer.
When that is dry, I will continue layering, building up color, tightening up detail, until eventually I won’t be able to think of any way to make it better.
Then I’ll do the usual finishing steps: sign, photograph, varnish.
Because I know you want to know, all I know is that this is somewhere north of Lake Tahoe.
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A woman contacted me via my connection with the Arts Consortium This is Tulare County’s designated arts council, an active and helpful group.
She had a request for a custom oil painting, which on the surface sounded normal. We began discussing via email, and eventually I learned the odd particulars of her job. She has a window in her home which looks out onto the neighbor’s wall, about 1 yard away. The window is a very specific measurement, and she would like a painting to exactly fill the space, 16-3/8 x 29-7/8″.
That is not a standard size. (Bet you already guessed that one.)
The customer, living in a city, has access to many businesses, such as a place that makes custom canvases.
Before she called the company, I remembered that when I first was learning to oil paint, I painted on Masonite, primed with many coats of flat white house paint. Back in 2006, I bought a sheet of 4×8′ Masonite (also called “panel board”), along with a table saw (which I put in the front passenger seat of Fernando*), and then Trail Guy cut the boards to the sizes that I requested. (Nope, I’m not risking my fingers on that machine.)
I looked through my scraps, but none were large enough to cut to size.
So, I took the pick-em-up truck to Vise-grip (AKA Visalia) to buy a sheet of Masonite, hoping I could buy a 1/2 sheet. At the least, I was hoping they’d be able to cut the full sheet into 4 pieces, but just in case they couldn’t, I left Fernando at home.
Alas, the correct saw at the big box store was broken. So, I bought the giant sheet and some really helpful guy with a really foul mouth helped me load it after he saw me wrestling with it in the parking lot. (He was not an employee: remember this was a big box store, not known for helpfulness).
Trail Guy figured out how to cut it to the exact dimension.
Then, when he was figuring out where to store the excess, HE FOUND A SCRAP FROM BEFORE THAT WAS BIG ENOUGH!!
Phooey.
*Fernando is my ’96 Honda Accord coupe. “Coupe” means two doors. You’re welcome. I try to expand people’s vocabularies here.
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Sometimes I draw simply because I love to draw. I try to hold back, because my flat files are full. When I have a good reason and know the drawing will not simply be stored in my files, then get outta my way.
(“Outta” is like “prolly” and “liberry”: words I like in spite of being an editor and a proofreader.)
An acquaintance did me a big favor, so I am drawing her cabin.
I started several months ago, then set it aside because of paid work. My work priority order is this: 1. commissions with a deadline; 2. commissions without a deadline; 3. building up inventory of subjects that will prolly sell; 4. reworking paintings that haven’t sold; 5. whatever I feel like painting or drawing.
This one is considered to be Category #2. The customer isn’t commissioning me because she doesn’t know she is a customer. I am commissioning myself.
What does commission mean? That’s another topic for another blog post.
This is the drawing before I tackled it with Photoshop Junior to prepare it for eventual printing, which most likely won’t happen.
And this is after I converted it to grayscale and erased any errant lines or spots, most likely the result of a scanner screen that WILL NOT come clean, which is most likely the result of scanning paintings that aren’t quite dry, which is most likely the result of being in a hurry, which is most like the result of any number of unfortunate incidents such as not planning ahead, pulling weeds or taking walks instead of working, or choosing to draw something without a deadline instead of painting to build up inventory.
Where were we?
Oh. The finished drawing.
Now I am outta here.
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A day before the big storm, there was a brief time of sunshine. It lit up this germander, a drought tolerant shrub that looks great in spring and horrid in summer.
That evening, Jackson did not want to be put away. He decided to walk the other way and then attempt to catch his own dinner. I walked around the yard calling for him, and of course, he ignored me. However, I found him. Can you see his tail?
He was very intensely focused on some quail which feed around dusk, which is when we feed our cats.
Dude, I am watching you, and you are not going to catch a quail. 
He showed up at the front door looking for entry to the workshop where his dinner was waiting. Michael walked him over, and put him away for the night.
The next day was so intensely green and my leaning tree was in full bloom. (It’s a flowering pear, one of the earliest trees to bloom and one of the last to hold its color in the fall.)
Eventually I made it into the workshop (the cats’ safe place at night) to get a little painting done.
The first one is called Below Terminus Dam. I love this view in spite of it not having snow-covered peaks in the distance. Some years there are poppies on the distant hills; it is too soon to know this year because we are having a real winter.
This is the commissioned piece, now finished. (The right side looks darker because I am casting a shadow on it.)
This is the painting that was giving me trouble. I’ve decided that it is finished now.
This concludes today’s post about your Central California artist enjoying spring, her recalcitrant cat, her yard, and painting her favorite Tulare County scenes.
Thank you for visiting my blog today.
If you receive these posts in email and the pictures in the post don’t show for you, tap here janabotkin.net. It will take you to the blog on the internet. These photos are from March 2, a brilliant and cold day.
A friend and I went for a walk. (This was before the big rains.) I realized that while this first photo is normal to us, it is probably peculiar to other folks. These boulders get moved to block parking spaces when Edison closes its beaches on busy weekends. This method of closing a parking area is probably unusual; I think it is innovative.
The river is flowing steadily but isn’t high because nothing above was melting yet.
The snow was sooooo low.
But the daffodils were bright, in spite of being slightly splattered with mud.
Enough. Get to work, Central California Artist!
This oil painting, an 11×14″ commission is coming together. No matter how difficult these seem at the beginning, if I don’t give up, eventually they get done in a believable manner.
“Nevuh, nevuh, nevuh give up” —good advice from Winston Churchill.
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The customer told me which mountains she wishes to see in her 11×14″ painting. So I started.
Sky, mountains, foothills, indication of distant groves, indication of closer groves. Then, it was too wet to continue. This might be an excuse; sometimes when painting these scenes, I hit a place of thinking it is too hard and that I can’t do it. (pathetic, no?)
So, time to move to the 18×36″ painting.
Working on a new sky layer gives me an opportunity to think about what I want to do here.
I think I want some overhanging branches, loaded with oranges. This means I have to make up some stuff, move some trees, bringing in some closer ones. And why not? I made up the snow-covered mountains in the distance. If I am painting this to please me, then yippee skippee, I can just go hog wild and really whoop it up.
I sure do know how to live, eh?
Happy Birthday, Little Sister!
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(More storms predicted for today and tomorrow, and if anything exciting happens, I’ll return to my post as photojournalist for you then.)
Back in January I started eight new oil paintings of orange groves. I added a similar painting of oak trees with distant mountains (for the show Locals), and then someone wanted a painting of the groves with hills and mountains in a different size. That brought the total to ten paintings, all similar. Five are now completed (one sold), and other than the commissioned painting, there is no urgency or deadlines.
The urgency is self-imposed on the commissioned painting. As I prepped the canvas, I realized that I didn’t know which view of the mountains my customer was interested in. So I sent her these two photos (she is the photographer but I am the painter) and then put a thin layer of paint on the canvas (too boring to photograph).
Since my palette was loaded with the right colors and I had the biggish brush in hand, it seemed like a good time to begin layering paint on the 18×36″ that I was hoping to keep for awhile.
While slopping it on, I realized that maybe I want a different scene than the one I painted for myself last time. No rush; the space in my dining room is currently occupied by a painting of redwood trees.
Next, I moved to this 6×18″ with the blocks of groves that are confusing. I repainted the sky, distant mountains, and foothills.
The groves are confusing because I have not been following the photograph or the advice I give to my drawing students: “Draw the dog before you draw the fleas.”
This means figure out the larger parts before putting in the details. So, I covered over most of the lines of the groves, got out the photo, and started to pay attention. It isn’t that I have to follow photos because they are the only right way to paint; I have to follow them in order to understand how to make those blocks of trees look believable.
This feels like slow going, perhaps because it is. When I draw, a day flies by. When I paint, it crawls. Maybe someday with enough experience this will change. Meanwhile, tick, tock, tick, tock. . .is it lunchtime yet?
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I thought this painting was finished and was about to scan it when I realized it was missing something important.
Snow covered mountains in the distance! White is the slowest color to dry, so it will be a week or two before this one is ready to scan.
This one needs definition in the distant groves and detail in the foreground branches. 
I am just making stuff up now. As long as it is believable, it’ll do.
This will take awhile, lots of painting sessions to try this, that, and something else.
Saturday night, remember to spring your clocks forward because Daylight Saving Time begins. It isn’t saving any daylight, merely shoving it an hour later so that mornings are dark again. There is talk of making it permanent, but those who think that is a good idea aren’t thinking ahead to waiting until 8 a.m. to see any daylight in the fall and winter months. I say leave the time right where it belongs and quit jerking us around.
So there.
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“Locals“, is hung now at Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery, now called CACHE. I hadn’t planned to enter, because I have never lived in Exeter. But then I learned that having my studio in Exeter for 9 years was qualification enough.
Because I had a solo show at the end of 2021 and then participated in a group show in 2022, I chose pieces that the likely audience won’t have seen yet.
Two of the five pieces are pencil, only shown to you and to my drawing students. I dug around through existing unsold pencil pieces to find mats and frames that might work and found two, so I unframed the old drawings. One of the new drawings needed to have its boundaries extended to better fit in the mat. Then, I put the newer drawings in those mats and frames, a tedious task.
In thinking about three oil paintings to enter, I decided to use one of the new orange grove paintings, one of Sawtooth (the view that was so very popular in my 2021 solo show), and a new painting of a new subject (shown to you in an earlier post).
This photo (2 taped together) was taken through my windshield on one of those fabulous clear days. It is shown here at an angle because otherwise it is too shiny to see here.
This got painted on a 6×18″ in spite of being proportioned differently from the photo, because I just cropped off the bulk of the sky. It was easy to paint, because the mountains are the same as on most of those orange grove scenes.
I considered the title “Heading East on 198”.
Then I reconsidered. 