Last week I told you that I don’t like the pumpkin painting in progress. Paintings in progress aren’t often inspirational, but this one didn’t seem hopeful at all. Something about the arrangement of things or the colors just wasn’t ringing my bell.
A friend brought us a bag of various citrus fruits. It was an AHA! moment for me, so I arranged them on the kitchen table in various formations. (This could be worthy of several paintings.)
Bye-bye pumpkins.It is both a relief and a weird feeling to scribble over the top of a painting that is getting close to completion.Scribble scribble like a bumpkin, who’s that scribbling on my pumpkin?The color of the actual fruit is much nicer than appears on the photo and on screen.
Trail Guy and I go for walks from our house in Three Rivers. I’d say its just what old people do, but we’ve been doing this for 20 years, and we still go steep places that may or may not be considered trespassing.
Here is how things looked yesterday afternoon.
The decorations on the Dinely Bridge might be considered a Peculiar Sight, but we are used to them and look for them.The star gets placed and lit by Southern Calif. Edison each December. It might be considered a Peculiar Sight to a newcomer. (I consider the dark spots in the sky to be a peculiar and annoying sight; it might be time for a new camera.)Some retired guys wear short pants almost all year around. At least this retired guy has nice legs. . .Sycamores along the river below have more color this year than in a long time.Edison is releasing water instead of sending it down to the power plant. I don’t know why.The clean air is such a relief after the rains, which we are so very grateful for.
Then we walked home, and our mulberry tree was just lit up with yellow. This is a fruitless mulberry, the type that gets hacked back to knobs by most folks. Not us – we need the shade and love the yellow (never mind what it has done to the grass beneath or is doing the ferns by the front porch).
Tucker and Scout were happy we returned. We have to sneak off so they don’t notice and follow us.
Scout is always ready for action (which is why she is slightly blurry in this photo.)Yellow eyes, yellow leaves, 2 black cats.
P.S. Today’s Anne Lang Emporium featured oil painting
Does “layered pumpkins” sound like a recipe? I guess it is a recipe for an oil painting, but I still don’t know if the efforts will be worth the finished result. Instead of trying to get this painting finished in one delusional pass over the canvas, I am building it up layer by layer. This is because I am making some stuff up and don’t know what I am trying to accomplish.
Here are the steps so far:
I started with a blue background because blue is the complementary color of orange and I thought it would be brilliant and beautiful.
I changed my mind and decided a dull grayish-blue would make the pumpkins look better.
Then it became apparent that the only thing to make the pumpkins look better is to work on them. In this series of photos, you might be able to see that I have worked on the pumpkins one at a time, working from left to right across the canvas. By the last photo, everything is wet and reflective, making it hard to appreciate the strong colors.
I don’t like this painting. Why not? Dunno. Can’t decide. It will need to enter an extended time-out so I can either mull it over or decide to just turn it into something else.
Maybe I’ll just start a new painting, this time of a subject that suits me better.
More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .
P.S. Today’s painting at Anne Lang’s Emporium (AND TIME IS PASSING QUICKLY FOR YOU TO EXPERIENCE HER FANTASTIC TURKEY MELT SANDWICH – DELI CLOSES DEC. 1, SO HURRY HURRY, I’M NOT KIDDING!!)
Mineral King III, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×10″, $125
Layering in multiple painting sessions? Or pushing wet paint around in minimal painting sessions? Does it matter?
Sloppy startTexture on the distant forest. I just make this stuff up because real life is much too messy to duplicate.Trying to be careful with color and light placement means paying attention to detail instead of saying, “Oh well, I’ll catch it on the next layer.”
Sunny Sequoias #34, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, SOLD
No matter the method, the Sequoia Gigantea trees get painted convincingly on 6×6″ canvases, and eventually they will sell for $60 each (plus tax, because it cost a ton of money for California to pay for its wildfires.)
The other challenge is getting the photo/scan on screen to look the same as the painting looks in person. (WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE? I NEED PEOPLE FOR THIS!)
P.S. Today’s painting at Anne Lang’s Emporium
Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60
P.S. TODAY’S FEATURED ANNE LANG’S EMPORIUM PAINTING
Oak Grove Bridge XXV, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATHRYN!! (It is today, yes. . .??)
I am a pencil artist. With the exception of portraits, I am able to draw almost anything in a manner which pleases both me and my customers. I love to draw.
Oil painting is much more difficult for me to achieve the results I want. I could quit a painting at almost any stage, and my paintings would fit someone’s idea of a decent piece of artwork. But I think my customers, collectors, friends and blog readers expect a certain level from me.
(Art is so subjective – good, bad, mediocre, genius, or why bother?. . . “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.)
I prefer realism, combined with great light, accurate details, attractive colors (as opposed to repellant ones) and believability. No big deal, eh?
Sometimes I start a painting with heavier paint and a deluded notion that I will be able to finish the painting in one session. Later I end up seeing missed spots, weird colors, and ways to make it better, so it ALWAYS takes at least one more session. This approach only works on forgiving subjects, so I don’t try to copy the photo, but just use it for guidance.
Other times I decide that there is no rush, multiple layering is the best way to paint, I will take as much time and as many layers as necessary to turn the painting into something that I am happy to sign. Depending on the subject, the calendar, and the number of paintings in progress, this approach takes 4-8 layers. (EIGHT?? I MIGHT DIE OF Git-‘er-dun by then.)
There are other ways to approach oil painting – plein air (standing outside in the shifting shadows and sneaky sunlight with bugs chewing on me and wind threatening to topple the easel), palette knife (thick clumps of paint smeared on with a palette knife as if one does not have access to brushes, for Pete’s sake, WHY?), and those are just the ones I can pull off the top of my noggin.
WHERE ARE MY PENCILS?? I NEED TO DRAW.
Stop it. There are 2 oil paintings of Giant Sequoias to paint, so you need to stay at the easels and focus, you doofus Central California artist.
Sometimes I have to parent myself this way.
P.S. Anne Lang will be closing her Emporium in Three Rivers on Dec. 31. She has 12 of my oil paintings. As a way to encourage you to visit her place (this is the LAST week of the deli – you MUST go have a turkey melt!), I will be posting one of those paintings per day while she is still open.
Kaweah Post Office XIII, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×10″, $125
We last saw the cabin scene oil painting when I was confused about the conflicting light sources:
With each successive layer, cohesion and coherence gets restored. (Aren’t big words great?)
I’m still missing the details needed to confidently paint this side of the cabin. My photo is outdated, and I have word out to some people who might have the necessary visual information.
It is rather astonishing and somewhat disappointing to me that I don’t have the details of every cabin memorized. One would think as an artist. . . but one would be wrong.
I just bumble along like the rest of the world. So, enjoy a closer look at the left side of the painting. It might be finished, sort of, maybe, but then again, I might want to continue adding details.
That’s what pencil artists do with enough time when handed oil paints and tiny brushes.
Making a cabin scene is different from just making a scene.
A cabin owner requested a painting of her cabin as a gift for her husband. (He only looks at the blog when it is about Mineral King AND she forwards the link to him, so I’m not ruining any surprises here.) She wants it to include a view that normally doesn’t show with the cabin, and requested a square format.
Because this is a little difficult, all this mind-reading, designing, and putting together things that aren’t normally together, I didn’t make a scene but began with sketches.
If you recognize this cabin, SHHHHH, IT IS A SURPRISE!!
She asked for square, so I showed her two squares plus a 6×18″ and this cabin painting; she agreed with me about this size and shape working well for her idea.
I thought I was out of this size of canvas, so I ordered some more. After they arrived and I was putting them away, I saw that I already had some that size. Someone around here could use an assistant, or perhaps a better administrator. Oh well. . . they won’t go to waste.
Will this fit?Yeppers, it fits, so get some paint on this canvas!
They all start ugly. No need to be afraid for me or the painting or the customer or the husband. No one will need to make a scene. (But wait! Is this creative??)
Starting with what I know, I put paint on Farewell Gap in the distance.The trees are next. They are just a mass of greens with some variation in the values (ArtSpeak for lights and darks).
A risk of this sort of photo-combining is that the 2 photos might have the light coming from 2 different sources. Would the customer or the viewer notice? I might be able to cheat, but it might bug me forever. So I began reworking the color on the mountains, because it is easier than figuring out how the cabin shadows could be reversed. I pushed more paint around until my fingers got cold and my efforts felt ineffective. This is far enough for now.
Realizing the problem of conflicting light sources almost caused me to make a scene, but that would have only served to upset Tucker and Scout.
One layer at a time, with oil paint on canvas, a 6×18″ canvas to be specific. Canvases this size and shape have become popular; they seem to fit well into odd spaces for people. I can accommodate this.
This is how Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park looked about 2 weeks ago.
Crescent Meadow
The proportions are different in this photo than on a 6×18″ canvas. Can I squish this into a horizontal format? Can I stretch it out and remain believable? Sure. This is a forgiving subject, not an architectural exactitude where I have to artificially elongate things, maybe shorten the height and add a few windows. That would be neither forgiving nor believable.
This messy and sort of ugly beginning lets me know this will work.Tucker doesn’t care, because there is something much more intriguing up the hill.All this discussion about proportion, believability and elongating has put Scout to sleep.Better sky (it is the farthest element), next grayish green on the trees that are farthest away.Those distant grasses come next.More trees, both near and far. Closer trees on the left.Closer trees on the right, bright yellow ones last.
After this is dry, I will look at it with more critical eyes, add a few more details, decide if the colors are really correct, and then sign it.
And honestly, Dear Readers, my paintings look a ton better in person.
I’m never quite sure what to do with these 2×2″ canvases. I thought I was ordering 6 but ordered 60 by accident. (This was quite a few years ago.) They are difficult to paint, and it doesn’t seem right to ask more than $20 apiece. Each canvas with an easel cost me about $3, and each one takes about 2 hours to complete. I probably could find a better paying job than this, but I’d have to put on real shoes and leave the house.
This was the first pass over the canvas. I wasn’t sure whether or not they were worth finishing, and I couldn’t find anyone to tell me the answer to this. Sometimes it might be nice to have a job with a boss to tell me what to do because then stupid decisions wouldn’t be my fault.
Now they are finished, except for signing. That is its own challenge on a canvas too small for a signature. (I sign the edges, and they have to dry first.)
Only the chicken in the middle remains at the time of this post – the other two have sold.
What is this unit?Maybe you can tell here.I bet you’ve figured it out by now.
I completed the first pass, waited a few days, and then revisited the painting with my tiniest brushes and strong magnifying glasses (the ones that melted a big divot in my stereo), There is never too much detail in my estimation.
Original oil painting, cleverly titled “Rooster”, 8×8″ on wrapped canvas, $100
Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.
Is watching grapes get painted about the same as watching paint dry on a fence?
Don’t answer that!
Outlining the grapes first seemed like the right approach.I wanted to start filling them in before the outlines were finished, but restrained myself.Sometimes it is easier to support my hand in a different position. Besides, to draw a circle, it is best to be on the inside of the circle.I filled them in from top to bottom, and for the most part, I just ignored the photo. And grapes come in all sorts of shades of purple, violet, red-violet, greenish purple (gurple), so no matter what I do within those boundaries, it will be believable.And kept rotating the canvas as I went.
When this is dryer, I will add brighter sunshine on the edges of some of the grapes. That contrast is what made me go for my camera when I saw these grapes.
And now it is dryer, and I am finished! Looks better right side up, yes?
Remember to contact me if you bought a 2019 calendar in person – if you bought it through the website, I have your info already.
