No, I’m not painting WITH kittens; no, they aren’t helping me paint; no, this doesn’t mean I have a painting with kittens as the subject. I’m painting with a paintbrush while the kittens are present and active.
The other two kittens hang out together quite a bit; one hides the most so she is “Heidi”, and the little black one is “Tucker” because he is cute like Tucker Carlson.
I WAS painting, I was, I was!! See?
Those 2 words together describe a work day last week. At the end of April with heat lurking around the corner, I found it difficult to stay positioned at the easels.
It was overcast, which made the flowers seem particularly bright and colorful. The 2 pinks grabbed my attention on the way to the studio.
It seemed like a good day to experiment with some of the mysterious settings on my camera and learn the differences.
Never mind for the photography lesson; get to work, Central California Artist!!
That’s enough painting. I NEED to evaluate those peculiar camera settings. Could ask The Google, I guess, but I’d rather figure it out myself. It is procrastination, but it is helpful. There is no Boss to tell me when it is time to learn new skills instead of producing new paintings. (Whatcha gonna do? Fire me?)
Is it gardening when I am planting flowers with my paintbrush? Is it gardening when I am painting wildflowers?
It doesn’t matter – sounds good in a blog post title and sort of works.
This is one of the popular 6×18″ sized canvases, begun with a few spots and slashes of color. I showed you these first 3 pictures in a post earlier this week.
Now for the more recent progress of this oil painting of poppies and lupine:
There needs to be grasses across some of the flowers for it to look real, but I can’t do that while the paint is wet or the grasses will be orange and purple. There is a messy poppy in the center (from left to right but sort of higher than center from top to bottom) that demonstrates the folly of this maneuver.
Now it is finished.
And, I know you are dying to know the state of our cat situation.
How have we altered Piper’s life? Look what we did yesterday:
Three tortoiseshell females and one solid black male. OH NO! HOW WILL WE TELL WHICH ONE IS PIPER WHEN THE NEW ONE GROWS UP??
April showers bring May flowers in some parts of the world; in Three Rivers, it is more this way: With April heat, May flowers are beat.
That’s okay. I can paint my own flowers.
But wait! What is all this?
This is how it looks when there is a stack of new paintings ready to begin. Sky is the farthest thing in a scene, so it goes on first.
Why tiptoeing? Because it feels slow and careful at this stage, like I am just feeling my way along, trying to be as careful as possible.
First up, Sawtooth, the commissioned oil painting.
Second, rebuild the Kaweah Post Office, also a commissioned oil painting.
Third, plant some grasses. (Oil paint grasses, not fescue or bermuda or dichondra or Kentucky bluegrass or. . .) There was more progress made, but the phone call came that it was time to rescue Piper from the vet, where he got civilized this week. $192. No such thing as a free cat. (Samson cost $132 – he was in better shape to start with.)
I tried to oil paint last Friday but the greenery and wildflowers overcame my sense of duty. So, Trail Guy and I drove up North Fork Drive to the end.
The road was longer, rougher, narrower than I remembered and all very worth the drive.
After we got back home, I painted a little bit more. There is this commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth for a very patient customer, and it would be good to make progress.
Then, I got distracted again and thought that wildflowers would look great on a 6×18″ canvas. Can you see the possibilities here? (Put on your rose-colored glasses with me!)
Remember the commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth? I do, really, I do. Please don’t worry, DV!
It was a rainy overcast day, and by the time I got to the Sawtooth part of the painting, the light was too poor to mix colors accurately. That wasn’t very important on the first layer, but it is increasingly important as the layers build.
So, I moved on to a Kaweah Post Office commission. SD asked me to paint another Kaweah Post Office IX for her. This one is number IXV. It should be XV, but I didn’t number one of my earlier Kaweah Post Office paintings. That happens a lot around here.
As I was painting, I realized it would be helpful to see the one this was modeled after, because maybe this wasn’t the actual photo used for that one. Yea for a laptop.
I think that “take two” is movie talk. Since I only see a movie in a theater about once every two or three years, this is only hearsay. But we are here today to have a look at easel time, because I really did plant my feet in front of the easel. Several patient people are waiting for their paintings and might be getting worried that I have quit painting.
First, we have a Kaweah Post Office painting with a wonky-looking roof (Thank you, Nikki, my former drawing student who learned to see truth and speak truth, because drawing accurately is seeing accurately.)
In the interest of self-preservation and professional dignity, IT WASN’T THAT FAR OFF! But it was off enough to warrant a patch-up. Besides, the flag is floating, and I am surprised that I forgot to put in the flagpole. (Maybe that’s why this one hasn’t sold. . .)
Next!
To be continued. . .
“Solds”? Is this really a noun? It is my world. Clearly the 6×18″ size is hot right now. Good thing I just ordered more canvases that size. I have several new ideas to paint in that format, so stay tuned.
All those paintings of Mineral King over the past several months erased the subject of Three Rivers from my mind. When I got reminded that I hadn’t yet reserved my booth for the Redbud Festival, I also remembered that people might want to see some Three Rivers subjects during that little show.
