And Another Still Life

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!!

I know, this doesn’t look like color. Just you wait. . .

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.)

A Productive Painting Day

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.)

Before: too dark, but also scanned too dark.
After: lighter, brighter, better
Before: bothered me for several reasons that are too boring and technical to go into.
After: better, more accuracy, more detail. (Oranges on those trees now!)
Before
After: subtle differences, and as always, better in person.
This one was bugging me, and in my normal definition of improvement, I just added more details.
So much better!

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, That, and Another Thing, Again

This:

This painting is inching forward. It wants wildflowers (fiddleneck) next, maybe some distant shrubs.

That:

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.

Another Thing:

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!)

Because I Feel Like It

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??

Quickety Fix

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.

The decision is made: this painting is called “Four Guardsmen”.

Inching Forward in the Heat

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.

Continuing to Paint in Summer’s Heat

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.

Painting in the Summer Heat

Last year when sales were almost non-existent, I forgot what it is like to arrange a painting schedule around the heat and the limitations of a swamp cooler. Now I remember. Everything has a downside and an upside. Last year up—no painting in the heat. This year up—good sales.

All set up, ready to begin, early in the morning.

I finished the 6×18 bridge and took it out to the woodpile for drying.

Then I got sidetracked polishing the door handle. Good thing I’m not on anyone’s time clock.

Next: Franklin Falls. This is 2 miles up the left/east side of the Mineral King valley, a pleasant walk with only a little bit of uphill, followed by a cold wade across the creek, unless you are inclined to rock hop, which I am not. I have 2 photos, neither of which is ideal, and neither of which is square.

That’s okay. . . I know the place pretty well, and I know what people expect to see.

When something is full of fiddly detail that can’t be exactly duplicated, because of ridiculousness and cramming 2 rectangles into a square, I just find the things that matter most. The rest can be fudged.

If you’ve been to Franklin Falls, I think you’d see that this is becoming recognizable and believable.

In discussing this painting with Hiking Buddy, I told her that it is sort of colorless, all greens and browns and grays. She wisely said (reading my mind), “That’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a few wildflowers”.

Off to the woodpile for drying; the flowers will go on nicely once it is dry. Or not nicely, but if it is dry, I can wipe them off and try again.

Fast Sequoias

What does “fast sequoias” mean?

It means that my sequoia paintings sell quickly and sometimes I have to paint more speedy-quick-like-lightning, chop-chop, andalé andalé!!

It looked like this:

Skies first, then take them outside to begin drying while I go do a few chores.

I hung one on the studio door to dry, and the other one in a less photogenic location.

While the paintings were outside in the ever-increasing July temperatures, I was in the swamp-cooled workshop, mixing browns and greens.

When I had the basic shapes covered in the base redwood colors, I began detailing one at a time

It was getting too hot to keep stopping for progress photos, so here is how things wound up at the end of the painting session.

One was shipped to Texas; the other might still be available at Kaweah Arts (in the Dome in Three Rivers, river side of 198/Sierra Drive.)

Three Ready and Two Not Ready to Sign

I made a list of what to fix on Red Barn, Big Oak, fixed it, and decided it is good enough to sign. (There is time to change my mind and add, correct, or subtract.)

I put another layer on the bridge, which is going to be a challenge for many reasons. This is the Marble Fork Bridge, one that most people probably just zoom over and don’t notice.

After taking another series of drive-by-shots, sketching some possible corrections, and making a list of things to improve, these hills seemed ready to sign.

Glowing Homer’s Nose was fun with these colors and simple plain distant hills. It seemed ready to sign.

I added a lot of detail to the big Classic Mineral King painting, but didn’t even get to all that was on the list. It isn’t ready to sign yet.

None of the colors seem accurate, but I photographed all the paintings inside on a day when the light outside was orangey because once again, it is fire season in Three Rivers, Sequoia, and the foothills.