Category: Mineral King

Mineral King After a Summer Storm

If you read this blog through an email subscription on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Last week there was such a storm in Tulare County that the marina at Lake Kaweah experienced some real destruction: the docks slammed around, wrecked houseboats, the docks broke apart or sank or both, and five houseboats also sunk. Now they are just in these large jams and people can’t get to them. What a freak of nature storm.

I was down the hill; Trail Guy was up the hill. The evening after the storm, he took these photos in that beautiful glowing light called “the magic hour” by photographers everywhere.

A couple of days later he took these photos out on the trail. This first one is white flowers that I have never seen before. Maybe I saw them and thought, “White, meh”. But I don’t remember.

Mineral King

Refocusing on Real Art

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

My real art is oil painting and pencil drawing. Road signs, deer cages, book safes are all just for fun. Useful fun, but fun, particularly because I listened to an audio book while working on them: Once Upon a Wardrobe, by Patti Callahan.

Then, I got serious and refocused on my real art.

I took this one all the way to the end.

Then I painted all the skies.

Next, I finished this one. Maybe. Now that I see it here, it is a bit too monochromatic for my tastes. (That means single colored . . . I wonder if wildflowers would look weird in the lower section. Certainly not believable, but maybe attractive.)

Finally, I finished another Sawtooth just before sliding into Idiotland.

Three down (maybe), five to go.

Mineral King oil paintings are the best sellers in the summer. The trick is to guess how many of which subjects and what sizes.

I wonder if I could make a useful crystal ball??

Mineral King oil paintings oil paintings

Another Cold Weekend in Mineral King

Some cabin folks across the creek registered lows of 20 and 21 degrees on their thermometer over the weekend in Mineral King.

Here is a little visible evidence.

A cabin across the creek from us keeps a sprinkler running, and it made a large patch of ice.

My ax froze in its bucket of water. We put it there when the handle gets loose so that the wood swells. (Froze my ax off?)

Here is the neighbor’s ice patch after the sun did its job.

The weekend was beautiful and clear. The parking lot was full of cars wrapped to keep out the marmots.

This marmot wasn’t interested in cars because he lives under a cabin.
The cold flattened the corn lily, AKA skunk cabbage. This mule belongs to The Park and is not interested in staying in the corral.

Crystal Creek was low. Nothing was melting up in the high country.

Brrr. We came home early where the weather in Three Rivers was moderate and comfortable.

Mineral King

Really Painting Sawtooth Again

I really am painting Sawtooth again. In fact, I finished the painting.

Clear, enlargeable photos, along with an operational swamp cooler, good podcasts, and nothing difficult hanging over my head made it easy to just git ‘er dun instead of looking for excuses to stop because it was too hard. Oh wait—must be experience that created the momentum.

See the South Fork Estates sign through the easel? That odd job is completed, which is why there is nothing hanging over my head.

Here is the progression: I have finally learned how to scan and photoshop this size of painting in spite of it being too long for my flatbed scanner. When combined with Photoshop Junior, I can patch the 2 scans together.

This is not that; this is too wet to scan. But, it is finished!! Only took me seven times to get comfortable enough with this scene to be able to stretch it into a 6×18″.

commission oil painting Mineral King oil paintings sawtooth oil painting

Are You Really Painting Sawtooth Again?

Yeppers, another Sawtooth oil painting. Sawtooth is visible from the flatlands of Visalia on a clear day and is the signature peak of Mineral King. It has recently become the most popular of the Mineral King subjects that I paint, and a few weeks ago, someone commissioned another version of the “Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint” view. This is number 8, and the first one in the ratio of 1:3 (6×18″, vertical).

As usual, I started with a scribbly base, and then put in the sky, working my way closer and closer to the front.

Suddenly, I was confused on all those mountain ridges, so I dropped into the stream to pick apart the rocks. I photographed the stream in order to see the rock formations at higher water, before the seasonal growth obstructed my vision. I don’t understand water flow well enough to convincingly make this up.

This represents an afternoon of work, trying to perfect the detail on the first pass, knowing full well that I will need to make corrections as the other parts get completed. And then those “other parts” will need to be corrected.

It would be satisfying to spend as much time on every painting as I am on this one. But paintings don’t require the level of detail that pencil drawings do, it isn’t cost effective, and for the most part, my customers don’t even recognize that level of intense detail. (Not everyone is as near-sighted as I am, albeit it with strong cheater-readers these days.)

Links to other posts about painting Sawtooth:

Mineral King Mineral King oil paintings oil paintings sawtooth oil painting

Trail Guy Hikes For Us

Who is “us”?

You, me, anyone who reads the blog but isn’t retired or on vacation in Mineral King. While I was painting walls inside Three Rivers buildings, Trail Guy went hiking in Mineral King.

He went up toward Timber Gap, and then to Empire, but not to the top, just a loop that gives good views.

While he was there looking at the mountains, I was painting the very same peaks in the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum.

This is Ranger’s Roost, AKA Mather Point, looking through the timber of Timber Gap. When you are looking at Timber Gap, it is the bump to the left/west. The Mather Party came over Timber and saw Mineral King. I drew the cover in pencil and colored pencil for a book about it, but I haven’t read it. I just look at the pictures. (This was a second edition—the original drawing on the first edition went missing so the publisher commissioned me.)

There were a few flowers: shooting star, Western wallflower, phlox.

This is the rock outcropping on Empire that gives the false impression of being the actual peak. It is a favorite for enjoying alpenglow in the evening light.

hiking Mineral King Mineral King timber gap

Messing With Other People’s Art

There have been several times in my career when I have been asked to change someone else’s art. I have repaired a torn canvas, changed a boulder in a painting that looked like a skull, fixed a child that looked like a little hunchback, and brightened colors in a dull painting. All these were done without knowing the original artist, and with assurance that the original artist would never know.

The Mineral King Room makeover was a different story. The original designer is highly educated, experienced and respected in The Art World. I am somewhat known in the local Art World, but I try to keep a low profile when it comes to any formal types of situation where I might be outed as a total DBO, mostly self-taught, Tulare County native. (You know how I feel about ArtSpeak. . . ugh.)

I respect the original artist of the Mineral King Room and understand that she put a lot of thought into the design. The folks who approved the design were awed by her work, and didn’t think that there would be a strong reaction to the teal color and the stylized mountains, which were all effective from a designer’s point of view.

The approvers were mistaken about the reaction, which was strongly against the color and the mountain shapes. This necessitated a call to your Central California artist, who also is the local Mineral King artist.

The designer wasn’t pleased when she learned that I would be giving her design a makeover. (What artist would be??) I don’t blame her, because she chose all the shapes and colors based on her design expertise, to provide the best interpretive background for historic displays. She was professional and polite, while sounding as if she was defending a dissertation, not in a defensive way, but protective and offering the rationale for her design decisions.

My approach, on the other hand, also based on training and experience, is to simply please the customer. (My very wise dad taught me the all important business principle of “You kiss their fanny and take their money”.) We have to think about who the visitors and supporters of the Mineral King Preservation Society are, and what they will understand. The answer to that is that they love Mineral King, not a stylized version of it. (“Nosirree, I’ve climbed Sawtooth, and that ain’t it!”)

This is how the mountains surrounding the Mineral King valley really look.

So, with respect to the designer, who is very good at what she does, I just dove in and “corrected” her work. I don’t mean that it wasn’t good; it just wasn’t right for the audience.

Did Mineral King Need a Paint Job?

Did Mineral King need a paint job?

No, but the Mineral King Room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum did. The blue didn’t match the murals in the room, and the mountaintops weren’t recognizable. (You can see the murals here.)

First, I was determined to mix the right shade of blue using whatever paints I had on hand. Lightfastness isn’t a problem on indoor murals, so I was able to use a can of indoor white paint that came from who knows where, along with my 2 mural paint blues. Mural paints are highly pigmented and that makes them very useful for making my own interior colors.

Second, we taped all the parts that needed protection. (This was not the royal we—I had great help from MKPS Sandi).

Next, I traced the tops of the mountains on the mural showing the peaks surrounding the MIneral King valley. This provided a guide to redraw the peaks to match reality. (This was based on the assumption that I painted the mountains accurately in the mural.)

I drew the mountains on with chalk. (It wasn’t a Mineral King blue either but it matched my painter’s tape.)

Then, I started painting and almost immediately, dripped onto the rust color.

Good thing there is touch-up paint for all the colors involved.

Here is an example of something weird that I have learned about acrylic paints, as opposed to oil paints: they are LIGHTER when they are wet. Doesn’t make sense, but it is true.

That teal color was great with the rust, but just not right for the subject matter. I told the Mineral King Preservation Society that if they are just going to waste the paint, I’ll be happy to take it off their hands. I’m sure I can find a use for it. (Weird how the rust looks like red here, and the white looks like light tan).

Now look at the room so you can see the corrected peaks and the color that matches the murals. (I’ll show a before and after on the 2nd shot for you.)

Before:

After:

The mountains in the Before photo are more dramatic and more proportionally pleasing. However, the mountains in the After photo are realistic rather than stylized, match the murals and give more display space for whatever will be going on the wall.

Tomorrow I will tell you a few thoughts about this job.

commissioned mural custom art Mineral King mural mineral king room mural

Quick Quick, Can You Help Us?

The Mineral King Preservation Society has 2/3 of a room at the Three Rivers Historical Museum. We call it The Mineral King Room, in spite of sharing it with another exhibit.

A few years ago I painted some murals in that room.

Recently, the room started getting a facelift, or perhaps “makeover” is a better word. I was at the museum for something, went in the Mineral King Room, and saw the beginnings. My first thought was that it was colorful and spiffy looking; my second thought was that the blue didn’t match the sky in the murals, and my third thought was that the supposed Mineral King peaks did not look like Mineral King.

Several weeks later, another Mineral King person stopped by and said, “That color of blue is doesn’t look like a Mineral King color, and I don’t recognize those peaks.”

Thus, I got a phone call, asking if I could change the color of blue and fix the line of mountains.

Aren’t you just dying to see what I am talking about?

An incidental thought about that blue: it is a great color, kind of a turquoise or teal, something I have quite a bit of in my wardrobe. It just doesn’t happen to match a sky in Mineral King. It might look better with the rust than the sky blue, but reality has to take precedence.

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Mineral King Is Now Open

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional cabin opening weekend. It is when Sequoia National Park unlocks the gate, and people begin backpacking and camping. Some years it feels like summer; some years it does not. This year was snow-free, but it did not feel like summer.

The classic view

This section was stripped of willows and other shrubs in the fire prevention efforts last fall. (I spent a ridiculous amount of time going through my photos to find one of how it looked before it got pruned to no avail.)

Monarch Falls and Creek are flowing well.

This is “Iron Falls” along the Nature Trail.

This is Iron Falls as recently painted.

The dandelions were prolific, bright, and charming (because they are not in my lawn).

This is the view of the stream that I painted 7 times over the winter in the Sawtooth oil paintings, and I took this photo in hopes that it will assist me as I paint #8.

This is painting #6 of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

As now seems to be the norm, there were dogs coming both up and down the Nature Trail with impunity. No one reads the signs, and no one cares. (There is a dog in this photo, although it is sort of a “where’s Waldo” type of view.)