New Paintings of Mineral King

After delivering oil paintings to the Silver City Resort (AKA Silver City Store), I looked at how many were left and realized that I needed more inventory. This is from the attitude that there will be sales, and they will be plentiful. My outlook stems from good sales last year, in spite of The Virus and The Fires.

Choosing subjects and matching them with sizes and shapes of canvases is always a bit of a guessing game. “A bit”, because obviously, if I have several of Sawtooth, no need to add more. Or if there are plenty of the Honeymoon Cabin, the Crowley cabin, or my favorite bridge (which is actually quite far from Mineral King itself but one cannot get to Mineral King without crossing the Oak Grove Bridge, unless one walks from another part of Sequoia, which is entirely a different topic of conversation for another crowd), then it is time to move into other less popular subjects. Those other subjects are just whimsy on my part. I flip through my photos, look at what has been painted and sold well in the past, look for new approaches to those subjects, and without lingering and overthinking, I make the choices in a real git-‘er-dun manner.

Let’s go!

It appears that I didn’t have enough of the Oak Grove Bridge or the Honeymoon Cabin yet. Maybe, maybe not. I can’t find my crystal ball. Can’t even remember if I ever had one.

What is this?? It is a painting of a juniper along the trail to White Chief. It was a good idea, but not good enough for someone to part with his hard-earned dollars. Thus, it will become something for someone else to part with her hard-earned dollars. (Here at Cabinart, we write an equal-opportunity pronoun blog, but we do not use the plural when referring to the singular, except for the royal “we”.)

As always, these early stages look atrocious. Fear not, Gentle Blog Reader, for your Central California artist will come through for you. After all. . .

. . .I use pencil, oil paint, and murals to make art you can understand, of places and things your love, for prices that won’t scare you.

 

Mineral King: Tiny & Unknown Flowers, White Chief

Another beautiful visit to Mineral King revealed many new-to-me flowers. Oy vey, a second Mineral King wildflower book will have to be published, maybe this one subtitled “Mostly overlooked boring and tiny flowers”.

Here is a peek, with my most elegant tapered and manicured finger for size:

I also found some other unknowns:

The new yellow one I showed you last week may be called Spring Gold:

For those of you don’t care about obscure and tiny unknown wildflowers but hung on to the end of this post, we went to White Chief, which has been relocated. It is no longer the short hike that I remember, although it remains just as steep. Someone moved that canyon up a couple of miles farther than last summer. Who would do that??

From the top down: Spring Creek; The Farmer and Trail Guy in White Chief; Off -Trail Guy in White Chief; the Honeymoon Cabin as seen from above rather than the normal view.

Mineral King, Opening Weekend

WELCOME BACK TO FRIDAYS ARE FOR MINERAL KING!

Memorial Day weekend is the traditional weekend that Mineral King opens up – gates, campgrounds (only Cold Springs this year), cabins.

  1. ROAD OBSERVATIONS: The road was well-pruned on the lower 6.5 miles, thanks to fire crews. The flowers weren’t very good until the mid elevations where the bush poppy, flannel bush, and blazing star showed up (all yellow, all kind of look alike). Drivers coming down were uncommonly courteous, but a couple heading up didn’t know the mountain courtesy custom of pulling over if someone catches up to you. (BECAUSE THEY ARE ALWAYS GOING FASTER THAN YOU, DOOFUS!) 
  2. It took 2 axes to tackle the low level of the woodpile. Trail Guy has been up the hill when the weather is cold, and he graciously leaves the splitting to me because he knows I love to do it.
  3. I walked the Nature Trail (down the road, up the trail) with my neighbor. We saw a shrub that has always seemed sort of like a currant – turns out it is a Sierra Currant, rather than the Wax Currant that is more common  in our neck of the woods.We also saw yellow violets (called Mountain Violets)and regular violets (called Violets in my book Mineral King Wildflowers)
  4. Trail Guy and I walked to the parking lot, where the 2 trees are marked for removal. (Who knows when it will happen?)
  5. We also walked to Crystal Creek, which is low and spread out, and then meandered our way back where I found a new-to-me yellow flower. The dandelions were out in large numbers too.

 

 

New Mineral King Oil Paintings

The new Mineral King oil paintings are dry enough for the scanner. Have a look:

Honeymoon Cabin II, 8×8″, oil on wrapped canvas, $100 plus tax if you haven’t left California
Oak Grove Bridge #33, 8×8″, $100 plus tax for California residents
Sawtooth, 8×8″, $100 plus you know what if you live you know where
Crowley Cabin II, 10×10″, $125 plus a penalty for staying in the Golden State

Same subjects, perhaps a bit more skill than last summer, definitely more skill than 2006 when I began painting. Why do I still feel like a beginner who has to apologize and make excuses? Anyone know a good counselor?

P.S. They ALWAYS look better in person.

My show “Still Here” is still there, at Arts Visalia, that is. The phone # to make an appointment to see it is 559-739-0905. Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, noon-5:30. The last day to see my work there is Friday, April 30.

One Inch Too Big

Here are the three dry Mineral King oil paintings that are one inch too long to fit on the flatbed scanner, which I now have to connect to the old laptop in order to use. This is because when I “upgraded” my operating system, it caused my current laptop to no longer communicate with the scanner. 

What passes for old in this world is just hard to comprehend. Merle Haggard had a line in a song, “Wish a Ford and a Chevy could still last ten years, like they should” – how about a printer or a scanner?

I now also have to do some shenanigans with a flash drive in between the old and new laptops in order to fix the unsightly black edges around some of the paintings because of that blasted “upgrade”. If I hadn’t said anything, you probably would not have noticed.

Never mind, let’s move on, shall we?

The Honeymoon Cabin (which is a museum for the Mineral King Preservation Society)
Farewell Gap (well, oops, I hadn’t signed that one and now have to retake the photo.)
The Oak Grove Bridge, #32 (I’ve probably painted it more than 32 times – sometimes I just lose track of numbers).

Each one of these is oil on wrapped canvas, ready for hanging, 6×18″, $165 plus California sales tax, which is 7.75% here in the foothills of Tulare County, deep in the heart of California’s fly-over country. (But we feed the world, and don’t you forget it.)

Guess I’d better gird my loins, find my inner warrior, be a brave soldier, and return to Forrest’s Dream Cabin.

Painting Mineral King Like Nobody’s Business

Forrest’s Dream Cabin still feels a bit daunting, too hard, too challenging. Maybe I am just lazy. Or the hateful time change still has me dragging. Or too many trips down the hill in one week threw me off my stride. 

Excuses, excuses. Even when I am in a diminished state of mental energy and toughness, I can paint Mineral King like nobody’s business*. 

When these are dry, I will hook up my old computer to the old scanner and scan them so you can get a better look. Tomorrow I will show you the ones that I photographed because they are too large for the scanner by ONE LOUSY INCH. (Who decided that 17″ was a good dimension for a scanner??)

*Such a strange cliché but I am not interested enough to look it up.

Classic Mineral King. . .

. . . in a new shape and type of light.

Have I painted this scene tall and narrow before? No. (Disregard the photo along side the painting – it was left there from a previous painting.)

Or in this evening light? I don’t think so.

Or with a dam on the creek? Nope 

I chose to leave off the smaller tree on the left. You probably wouldn’t notice if I didn’t tell you. This might be finished. Of course I can always add more detail. . . 

P.S. If you recognize this charming child, wish her a happy birthday today !

Details, Details

The new Mineral King oil paintings continue along, three going from lacking in details to completed.

The background of this 6×18″ Oak Grove bridge looks pretty good, but there are some missing architectural details.

Details in place, drying in the sunshine.

Lots of missing details here:

Details in place, drying in the sunshine.

Here is the 8×8″ Oak Grove bridge painting in steps. Architectural details still missing, but background looking good.

Details in place, drying with its unfinished cousins.

P.S. Here is a link to a teaser page about my upcoming show, Still Here. Arts Visalia

Summer’s Coming and so is the Bridge

Last week it got cold and rainy but I painted in the unheated workshop anyway because summer is coming and I will wish it was cold. Yes, there is a heater which Trail Guy offered to light for me several times, but I declined. It was overcast, and I knew I wouldn’t be painting all day because it was a little hard to see the colors correctly.

In deciding which of the 7 Mineral King oil paintings to work on, it may not surprise you that I chose one of the Oak Grove Bridge, my favorite subject to draw and paint.

The bridge needs to be refined and the foliage needs to be finished. Then I will probably start on the other oil painting of my favorite bridge in all of Tulare County. 

 

Summer’s Coming

Yes, yes, I know it is still March, my second favorite month (interpret that either way you would like). But summer comes every year, and with it comes the need for me to supply Silver City Resort with oil paintings to sell. There isn’t a lot to paint of Silver City itself, and as nice as it is, people go there BECAUSE IT IS NEAR MINERAL KING.

Excuse me for shouting. I feel that all the way to my toes, since I took a job at Silver City in 1985 BECAUSE IT IS NEAR MINERAL KING.

Here are the paintings that I have begun in order to have merchandise for Silver City to sell.