We left off with this painting of a fabulous view from a special place in Tulare County at this stage. Everything remaining to finish falls under the category of Drawing With My Paintbrush.
Whether drawing or painting, I often turn things upside down in order to see the shapes accurately. If things are right side up, our brains talk to us about what we think we see. If we flip things over, we are forced to study the shapes and proportions as they really are. So, this method was helpful in copying the shapes of the mountains correctly.
Next, the valley below needed detailing. I didn’t try to make it exact, because no one cares. (It ain’t the Sierra!)
I added more detail to the closer hills, then put in the oak tree on the right.
Finally, I put more detail and contrast on the rocks.
It isn’t signed because after all the greens dry, there will be some wildflowers. Never miss an opportunity to put in wildflowers!
When I showed my two orchard paintings, Sharon, a real life friend and most active blog commenter, suggested I paint a stonefruit orchard in full spring color.
I told her that those orchards just aren’t in my normal routes.
Then, I went to Fresno for a day. The plums (white blossoms) were finished blooming, but there were some peach orchards still going strong. Since I prefer backroads to the dreaded State Highway 99*, I was able to find a blooming orchard with a shoulder to pull over and take a few photos.
Oops. I was in a hurry. Sitting on the side of the road while traffic blazes past isn’t conducive to careful framing of one’s photographic shots.
There were better orchards, but a ditch separated them from the road. AND, I didn’t think of it at first. Probably should have taken photos on the way to Fres-yes instead of waiting until I was on the way home. Maybe I need a boss.
Pretending that I had a boss who told me to get crackin’, I messed around with the photos and came up with this beginning.
I bet this orchard painting will sell quicker than the walnuts or the olives.
THANK YOU, SHARON!
*99 is said to be the darkest highway and the most deadly of all state highways: a study says “Highway99, a 424-mile road that runs through the state’s Central Valley, leads the country for most fatal crashes per one hundred miles”. But that doesn’t matter, because we will get a bullet train from Modesto to Bakersfield some time in the next 50 years or so. You should see the stone-henge type concrete supports, complete with graffiti along the route. . . lovely fixtures in Central California for almost a decade now. As I said Friday, California is a special kind of stupid.
The canvas was finally covered, with good detail in the rock faces. (Not real faces—it is just the way to clarify that I am talking about vertical rocks rather than basic boulders.) I didn’t try to match the scene line for line or space for space. It already is taking w a a a y t o o l o n g. So, I just tried to capture the feel of the place.
The gully/ravine/drop off behind the bank of flowers wasn’t looking separate enough so I darkened the edge. There are still many details to perfect on this painting, but I need to wait until all the green is dry so it doesn’t muck up the colors of wildflowers. You KNOW I will put in more wildflowers. 😎
Time to begin the last oil painting in the queue. It won’t be the last one for the solo show in the fall; it is the final one before I start painting smaller pieces of Mineral King to sell in the summer.
This is a special Tulare County view; it is from a place open by invitation only. We were fortunate/lucky/blessed* enough to receive such an invitation last spring.
It is important that I get the snow-covered Sierra Nevada accurate. Sorting out all the peaks is very time consuming, so I skipped it on this day in order to see some bigger progress.
I had to stop painting because it gets dark at the end of the day, in spite of the time change. (You can’t make a blanket longer by cutting off the bottom foot and sewing it to the top.)
There will be wildflowers. . . thank you for asking.
We had a beautiful spring day before spring arrived. Instead of being out enjoying spring, I was inside painting a picture of spring.
First, I varnished four newly dried paintings.
It was definitely an open-door sort of day.
The view was distracting, but I needed to be focused on the scene on the easel.
This is what remains: details on the distant trees and shrubs; lower section of rock, grasses behind left-side lupine; MORE WILDFLOWERS!
Sigh. I’d like to be out on the trail instead of in the painting workshop. However, the foot trouble has a good side because it keeps me planted in front of the easels when I have many paintings to finish of Tulare County’s prettiest places.
Spring is here in our world of Three Rivers, and it is almost here on the calendar.
Sometimes I see a beautiful scene that just can’t be captured with a single photograph. The light is wrong so the colors come out weird, or there are branches obstructing important views. So, I take as many photos as possible and then put them together in a rough manner using Photoshop Junior. (Photoshop Elements is the “easy version”, in case you are wondering what Photoshop Junior is.)
One spring morning last year, my neighbor and I were walking on a trail above our houses in Three Rivers. I knew it had the makings of a nice painting, but I only had the inferior camera on my phone, and the light was quite low.
I took all these photos anyway. Each one had something going for it, and I hoped that I could patch them together to capture the moment in a believable manner.
Comb Rocks shows well.strong color on distant hillsnice trailComb Rocksvisible flowers different exposure, more flowers
After putzing around on Photoshop Junior, I decided that a square format looked best. Using Photoshop is the modern version of doing a “thumbnail sketch”, something art teachers always insisted on but never explained properly (like much of what was required in art classes, heavy sigh.) It is a way to see if all the elements look good together, are the right sizes and in the right places.
This is more of how I want it to look, but the trail is going the wrong direction.
I made the distant hills larger, emphasized the colors, made sure the hills included the landmark Comb Rocks, placed the trail where I wanted, and filled the foreground with wildflowers.
I finally got the photos to fit together in the best possible way. Here is the final painting, still untitled.
Now that’s what I’m talking about! I wonder why it took me so many years to learn to use my computer this way. Must be slow on the uptake. . . certainly not an early adopter of tech. . . plodding. . .the way I’ve always done it.
My natural bent is toward finishing. It is satisfying to git-‘er-dun, to cross things off the lists, to move things into the finished column. Perfectionism is for other people.
However, as I prepare for the solo show in the fall of Tulare County’s prettiest places, I am warning and counseling myself to not settle for merely finished. A painting will be finished, drying in the house, and as I pass by it multiple times, suddenly a detail will be wrong or missing.
Example #1: Big Oak. The shadow beneath the tree (or maybe it was supposed to be dirt in shadow) looked red. I kept ignoring it, and then one day I saw that the trunk of the tree wasn’t dark enough. Back to the easel!
BeforeAfter
The lighting is too different for the improvements to show here. I guess you’ll have to trust me.
Example #2: The Homer Barn. Yesterday after I showed it to you, I wrote this: “AND NOW I SEE SOMETHING ELSE TO FIX!!” What?? Yeppers. The cows were too small.
BeforePhotoshopped version
After messing around on photoshop to see if it looked better, I returned to the easel. The paint wasn’t flowing well, so I reduced the size of the herd. I also didn’t get them as large as the photoshopped version, but decided to settle.
I wonder how long this version will be acceptable to me in my new mode of finessing and polishing? (Never a real perfectionist)
On March 1, a Big Storm, nay, a Very Big Blizzard was predicted. I painted that day, of course working on more pieces of Tulare County’s prettiest places.
I just couldn’t leave this one alone. A couple of things were nagging, so in spite of thinking it was finished, I made a few more tiny improvements. Can you see what they are?
AND NOW I SEE SOMETHING ELSE TO FIX!! Sigh. Will this painting ever meet my ever-increasing standards??
The trail painting needed another layer, some corrections, and the wildflowers.
Then, it finally rained. Trail Guy raced out to tell me to come look, hurry hurry hurry. So, I did.
Tucker had diamonds in his fur. The camera didn’t quite capture the magic.
So, I went back to the easel to work on White Chief (Mineral King). First, I redid the sky, then added some refinement to the peak. (You’ll have to wait until you see it in person to appreciate the amount of detail.)
After that, I worked on rocks and grass.
Finally, I worked on the water, bigger rocks, and placed some trunks of trees, doing my best to not arrange them like an orchard. There is an automatic bent to put things the same distance apart; I do it, my drawing students do it, and we all have to remind one another to keep things looking natural and a bit more haphazard. (Of course, if we are trying to make something perfect such as stairs, we cannot make it look right.)
This one is shaping up very nicely. I love White Chief (in Mineral King), and it feels as if I am there when I am painting it (minus the gasping and sweating and tired legs). The trees, more waterworks, and the rocky thingie on the bottom left remain. Then I’ll probably keep polishing and refining, because that’s what I do.
What makes a good painting day? So glad you asked. It is a day where I make visible progress on paintings, the kind of progress that makes me like the pieces I am working on, and the kind of progress that brings me closer to putting the paintings on the DONE list of Tulare County’s prettiest places.
I didn’t photograph this one after putting on the final touches, so I’ll just tell you that I fixed the branch in the center that is too light and too straight. I also added a few branches hanging down in front of the main tree with leaves and a hint of olives. Then, I signed it!
The road is dirt now. Yeah, yeah, I know that Dry Creek Road is paved, has a center line, and feels like a freeway compared to the Mineral King Road. But this is my painting. So, moo. I also tightened a few details on the barn.
This one needs to dry so that I can add wildflowers. Looks as if that leaning tree on the left could use a bit of straightening. It didn’t look weird in the photo, but it isn’t translating well here. When the flowers are in the painting, I will do a post showing you all the photos that I used to make this scene, which is the best representation of my memory of walking this trail on a very early morning last spring. The photos just don’t tell the story.
This painting is another compilation, or perhaps amalgamation is a better word, of many photos. I know how it looks in person, the camera doesn’t tell the story, and so I mess with the photos on Photoshop to see if I can make the different elements work together. Then I use that to create the scene I remember.
This was so fun. It felt as if I was painting for an hour or so, and suddenly, the day was over!
Let’s start with the signature. This indicates that I am finished with a painting, although I can be convinced to return to it later if something needs fixing up, something that I didn’t notice earlier.
Now, to the new paintings. As normal, I studied my photos, messed with a few on Photoshop Jr. in order to blend several images of the same scene into a more perfect version (if one ignores all the sloppy photoshop seams), looked at the available canvases and chose sizes.
The first one is a 10×10 scene of a trail, not a road. I’m tired of struggling with roads. At the time of these four new starts, I have 2 paintings with unsatisfactory roads holding up the completion. Roadwork is often an obstacle to progress, don’t you think?
This might be easy for a few folks to recognize, although I’ve never painted this view before. Getting the shapes right was tricky, because I blended several photos together, so after messing with the shapes for awhile, I realized that the sky would be an easy step forward.
I’ve never painted this scene before either, and yet I am boldly marching forth on a 16×20 canvas, which is quite huge for me. It will have a stormy sky, in case you are wondering why it is grayish.
Finally, here is one that is probably going to be the most difficult. The size is 10×20″, and once again, it is a scene I haven’t attempted before. I drew the general shapes first. It felt too hard, with many of the shapes fuzzy in the distance, morphing into the next shapes, looking enough alike to confound me each time I looked at the photo.
Baby steps. Just get some color down, Central California Artist—it ain’t rocket surgery!
Sky. I can paint sky without too many worries.
Some days painting feels very difficult. If my feet didn’t already hurt, I might be tempted to go find a job as a waitress, a cafeteria worker, or maybe as a checker in a grocery store. HOWEVER, I feel a calling, a responsibility, almost a sense of urgency to paint the prettiest places in Tulare County before I am too old or they are all gone.
LOOK AT MY YARD RIGHT NOW!! (Those are flowering quince.)
This day’s oil painting session went from an olive grove to a walnut grove. (Grove or orchard? Same thing.) The day ended with a potential cattle ranch.
The last olive grove painting session left me with this mess to tackle, layer by layer.
I began with improving the trunks and branches. Here you can see one of the main reference photos.
Next I put in leafy texture.
The front gnarly trunk needed detailing, and now it needs to dry. After it dries, I will fix anything that is looking wrong, and then, if the paint is flowing well, if the force is with my brushes, and if I become one with the canvas, I hope to put in some close branches where you can see leaves and olives.
Time to visit a walnut grove. Clearly, this is a walnut grove, no?
No. It is not clearly a walnut grove. All the lined up trees seemed difficult (read “impossible”). I started with the closer trees.
Here you can see the main reference photo. It was a little tricky to condense a rectangle into a square and do it believably. I don’t feel the need to put in every tree. I do feel the need to have the trees line up in their rows. (How do farmers plant their orchards so perfectly?)
I got tired of brown, so I moved to the distant horizon line and put in the sunlit green in the distance, and then patches of sunlight on the ground. It isn’t as close to finished as the olive grove painting, but I ran out of daylight and the cats wanted to reclaim the workshop as their cafeteria and dorm.
But first, I erased the center line on the road of this painting. There was a bit of a pickle here: I want cows, but that means a fence, and without a real photo of a fence in this position, it is too risky in terms of believability. I could do it if it meant saving all the women and children, but this doesn’t come anywhere near that sense of desperation. So, I messed up the center line and the asphalt, and when it dries, I will try to make it look like dirt or gravel, which means the cows won’t need a fence.
It was really getting dark out. I was cold, tired of difficult decisions, and the cats wanted dinner, so that was the end of my day of farming with a paintbrush in the groves, orchards and ranches of Tulare County.
