I find most painting subjects to be just a little bit too hard for me. Is this because I am mostly self-taught? Maybe. Is it because I have only been painting for 12 years? Maybe. Is it because I don’t know when a painting is “good”, or “finished” or “overworked” or “incomplete”? Yeppers. That’s it.
After struggling through figuring out how to blend Snozz Rock Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge, how to work from 2 photos with different light, how to just make stuff up, all on a GIANT 18×24″ canvas (well, it IS giant compared to my normal 6×6, 8×8, 6×18 and 11×14 sizes!), I decided to work on the “teensy” forgiving 8×8″ oil painting of the South Fork of the Kaweah (“kuh-WEE-uh”) River.
Scary Scribble StageBetter sky, better upper foliage (painting back to front)Slowly working my way down the canvas, or forward in the scene
Cool! I’m starting to like this!Scout wondered if there was any reason to be alarmedNah, just normal human thingsTucker wondered if there would be any treats soon.Finished painting, signed, edges painted, and drying!
And thus we conclude the teensy forgiving oil painting of a common well-loved Three Rivers Kaweah River view. (Hey Uncle Google, how did I do on all those key words??)
I worked for awhile on the oil painting commission of Homer’s Nose With The Oak Grove Bridge (WHAT shall this one be titled?? Snozz Rock? Sue’s View? The Nose And The Bridge? The Bridge and the Nose? Don’t Blow Your Nose On My Bridge?)
Second layer finished!
And thus, we have successfully covered the great desert of a scary semi-empty canvas with another layer of oil paint.
Farewell Gap, a pencil drawing, will be available as a framed original for $400 and in card sets.
After 7-8 months of painting toward a show about Mineral King and (almost) in Mineral King, it is tomorrow!
Is it considered shouting to use bold type? Or is that only for capital letters? I’ve always always always considered italics to be whispering, so maybe this paragraph will be more soothing to your ears.
Four artists with cabins in the Mineral King area will be showing and selling our work on the deck of the Silver City Store tomorrow, June 30, 10 AM until 3 PM.
The Silver City Store is 21 miles up the Mineral King Road. It is a long way there, a long and winding road, and it is well worth the effort it takes to get there. The store is at about 6700′ in elevation, and it is no longer called “The Store” but now is “The Silver City Resort”. The store itself has been remodeled into a new rustic elegant interior; the artists will be on the spacious outdoor deck.
Linda Hengst, Joan Keesey, John Keesey and I will be there. Linda paints in acrylic (or is it oil? Hard for me to tell the difference), Joan does tight realistic botanicals in watercolors, and John does whimsical playful watercolors of somewhat stylized scenery of the area. Linda’s work makes you say “Ahhhh”, Joan’s work makes you say, “Ooooh”, and John’s work makes you smile. My work? Um, let’s see. . . “How much for this one?”
I am taking 23 oil paintings (some of which I have shown you on this blog), 5 pencil drawings (all of which you have seen on this blog), Mineral King cards (old and new designs), a few reproductions of pencil drawings (also of Mineral King, duh) and some copies of my book The Cabins of Wilsonia. (The Cabins of Where? Yes, they have been requested.)
Let’s roll! See you tomorrow??
Art: Inspired byMineral King
Show and Sale
FOUR ARTISTS: Jana Botkin, Linda Hengst, Joan and John Keesey
SILVER CITY RESORT, 21 miles up the Mineral King Road
Saturday, June 30, 2018
10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Honeymoon Cabin #33, 6×18″, $160 inc. tax. (I like this one so much that if I saw it in a gallery, I’d probably buy it.)
Not talking audibly to myself anymore, decisions made, work begun on the oil painting commission of Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge.
Scary Scribble State mitigated by nice sky
Madame Customer stopped by my studio to retrieve her photos and saw the scary version. She made another change to our plan, and I was eager to try it. Her suggestion was to forget about the green hills below Homer’s Nose and extend the greenery above the bridge up closer to Snozz Rock.
Nice sky with some mountain colorSome mountain color and rock shapeSome rock shape with some lower foliage, extended upward toward the snozz.This painting might turn out well – Madame Customer, once again I salute you for your good ideas and suggestions! (and good thing I’m not a contractor who charges for those dreaded things called “change orders”)
Today’s oil painting for sale:
This is a sweet little 4×6″ oil painting of Sawtooth, on a board, sitting on an easel, $45.
No Mineral King today – I haven’t been for a couple of weeks because I went to Hume Lake.
I love to read. Do you?
Some of my favorite podcasts are about books and reading: What Should I Read Next, By the Book (the one with all the cussing), Just the Right Book, From the Front Porch. While listening to several podcasts recently, I learned of a PBS thing called The Great American Read. It is a book popularity contest, seeking America’s favorite novel. You can watch the 2 hours of the program about the books, and if you love books and reading, you will enjoy this program. Then you can vote for your favorite novel, which any reader knows is an impossible task. No problem – you get to vote once a day until the contest ends in the fall.
I didn’t vote because it requires a sign-up, either through FaceBook (not happening for this little gray duck) or via email, and I don’t want to put myself on another list. However, you might. Or maybe you want to do what I did after watching the program: read the list and count how many of the books you have read. I have read 36 of the 100, and a few of them are on my To-Be-Read list.
What does this have to do with being an artist in the Central Valley of California?
Nothing.
Will you tell me 2 things? 1. Which ones you would vote for and 2. how many you have read off the list. Inquiring minds need to know. (I am an Enneagram #5 and a Questioner in Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies – you may need to do some reading to understand this stuff.)
Here is today’s painting: Reading Rabbit, AKA “Salt & Light”, an oil painting on board. It isn’t for sale, because I like it too much to sell.
Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″, Not for sale
That is the name of a country song by Dolly Parton. Only the title applies to this post.
If my record keeping is correct (and it rarely is, but closies count here), then I am beginning oil painting #75 in 2018.
I didn’t mean to begin another oil painting, because hot weather is here and the swamp cooler is barely adequate for the really hot days. But I was flipping through some photos, looking for something now forgotten, and I saw a photo of the South Fork of the Kaweah River (here in Three Rivers, pronounced “kuh-WEE-uh”). It has been awhile since I painted water; last year I obsessively drew water in pencil, but this year only painted it when it appeared beneath a bridge or in a Mineral King painting.
The photo is upside down. So is the canvas. Can you tell? Nope, you can’t. The way I know is by the hanging wire, which you cannot see.Basic shapes and sort of the right colors, just smeared on, is the way I begin paintings sometimes.Right side up, does this resemble a river scene?
Why did I begin this when I have the large commissioned oil painting of Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge?
Because I am 58 and I can do what I want. . . OR
Because the 18×24″ painting was too intimidating. . . OR
Because sometimes I just drift and flail and fly by the seat of my pants. . .OR
I dunno; your guess is as good as mine.
Someone around here needs to parent herself a little better. Or boss herself. Or not.
Today’s oil painting for sale:
North Fork of the Kaweah IX, 10×10″, $150 plus Calif. sales tax.
Do you remember being required to say that when you were done with dinner as a kid? (We might not have had to say “please”. . . it isn’t sounding familiar to me, but with that degree of rudeness, why was permission even required? Never mind.)
The Redwood & Dogwood painting might be finished.
The Oak Grove Bridge might be finished.
Please, may I be excused?
Today’s painting for sale:
Sunny Sequoias XXX, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60 plus California sales tax of 8% (you may do the math for us)
Do you think it is “sellsy” and push to show you a painting for sale at the end of each blog post? That’s the last thing I want to be! (or maybe being sellsy and pushy would be better than being rude and not asking politely to be excused from the table. . .)
The Oak Grove Bridge on the Mineral King Road is my favorite subject to draw and paint, except when it isn’t.
I’ve been inching along on this painting for months. The angle is unusual, the details are hard to see, and the colors are somewhat difficult to discern, all of it making for tricky business.
However, I’m FINALLY getting close to finishing.
This is how it appeared when I began on this, the umpteenth day.Not sure where to begin, I charted out where the posts would go on the railing. I know there are 7 little ones between the larger ones, because I’ve done this a few (dozen) times.But what goes between those little posts? Some places it is the posts on the opposite side of the bridge, and some places it is the space beyond.Is this photo of the painting any more advanced than the previous one? Welcome to my world of the Treadmill Bridge Painting.Here I have begun to tighten up the edges on the horizontal pieces, using a yardstick while the painting is lying flat. (How do Real Artists do this?? How do plein air painters handle these challenges??)Time to begin the landscaping on the lower section.It’s growing. . .Too wet to continue. . . in the next painting session I will add lots of little green speckles in various shades.
When the little green speckles leaves are in place, I’ll sign it, photograph it, and call the lady who expressed an interest in this painting during the Redbud Festival.
Then I’ll move back to the collage commissioned oil painting of the Oak Grove Bridge with Homer’s Nose. That bridge will be a straightforward angle, no tricky business.
Today’s painting is a pencil drawing of another bridge, also associated with Mineral King:
Mineral King Bridge, pencil, matted and framed to approx. 12×16, $400
After a quick start on the redwood and dogwood painting (redwoods are Sequoia Giganteas, Sequoia being the source of the name for Sequoia National Park), it was time to do my usual slow, careful, meticulous, thoughtful detailing. (Is this painting better or painting the same as I always do??)
Branches firstBlooms and leaves.More blooms and leaves.More blooms and more leaves.“Wow, you humans sure are mysterious.” Is this what Tucker is thinking, or is he wondering if there will be treats soon?Even more blooms and more leaves, along with more layers and detailing on the Sequoia.And more branches.“This is so boring I fell asleep.”More leaves on the branches.Feels done, but absolutely will need more refining and detailing and brightening and edge-sharpening before I sign it and paint the edges.
Want to buy this painting?? You may. It is 12×16″, $300 plus California sales tax of 8%, one of the highest tax rates in the nation.
The commissioned oil painting combining two Tulare County scenes feels like a mini-mural. 18×24″ is HUGE when I am accustomed to 8×10″ or 6×18″.
Often I have pondered why it is that a mural feels sort of easy because of its large size when a large oil painting feels daunting. Is it the number of layers? the level of detail? An oil painting certainly takes longer.
My customer approved of sketch #2.
Sketch #2
She is gracious and told me there is no rush. However, I am a bit of a “precrastinator”, a made-up word that is the opposite of “procrastinator”. It is much better to begin, to act as if there is a deadline, to be ready for contingencies, interruption, opportunities, and other emergencies than to just lollygag along, figuring it will get done when I FEEL like it. And losing momentum is a real risk – a customer can change his mind, or it could get too hot to paint. Besides, the sooner I finish a commissioned job, the sooner I get paid.
(There was a sign in a print shop where I used to work that said, “I work for money, not for fun; I want my money when my work is done.” I work for both.)
First, a little fun with Scout. She is sitting on Samson’s shelf. (He doesn’t need it any more. Sigh.)
Now it is time to get to work.
Such a basic beginning. I just draw the general stuff with my paintbrush.
To be sure of the shapes, sizes, proportions, and angles, it is easier to be objective when everything is upside down. The goal is to get a first layer on the canvas, something that I can correct with each successive layer.
That’s enough for the first second third fourth step of this commissioned oil painting. (The first was a conversation, the second was an exchange of photos and a sketch, the third was the second sketch with the approval to begin painting).
