These Mineral King oil paintings began as four little messes. After the second pass over the canvas, they dried outside in the sun for 24 hours. That was all it took for them to be ready to scan and move up the hill to the Silver City Store for sale.
They NEVER look as good on the screen as in person. (Feel like taking a drive up a long and winding road?)
Each one is 4×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, ready to hang without a frame or to set on a shelf, $54 includes California sales tax.
Mineral King oil paintings have been selling steadily this summer at the Silver City Store/Resort.
The popularity of subjects has changed a bit. The Honeymoon Cabin is this year’s favorite, the Crowley cabin/Farewell Gap (view from the bridge at the end of the road) is second, and only one Sawtooth painting has sold. All the other paintings are in the category of Everything Else, which includes back country, trails, streams, and general scenery of the area.
The most popular size remains 6×6″ (perhaps because I paint more of that size than any other) with the second most popular size 4×6″. The large paintings look good in the store, but most people just want a bargain.
There are a couple more on the list of solds, but I didn’t keep close enough track and can’t find the scans of those paintings. (There are drawbacks to living in 2 places, one of them without the internet, but I bravely soldier on.)
Maybe for next year I should just do 6×6″ Honeymoon Cabin oil paintings. Wait, that won’t work because the market for those may be saturated. But wait. . . are the customers one-time visitors, repeat guests, or cabin community members?
The business of art is full of by-guess-and-by-golly. There is so much more to being an artist than just painting. . . all the thinking and planning in the world is still just an intuitive guess.
My four little messes from last week have become paintings. This 4×6″ size is tricky to paint. I hold them in my left hand, often ending up wearing paint in addition to applying it, and always wishing for smaller and smaller brushes. They retail for $50 (plus 8% tax, welcome to California) each, and the place that sells them takes a bite out of the $50, so I have to be careful to not pour too many hours into them.
In other words, I have to “settle”. Two passes over the canvas is all they get, and rather than focus on precision, I focus on pleasing colors and contrast. That’s not natural to this Central California artist whose specialty is detail in pencil.
But, I bravely soldier on. . .
But wait! There’s more!
It has been a few weeks since I oil painted. Little paintings are selling steadily at the Silver City Resort/Store 4 miles below Mineral King, and in this final push of summer before the season shuts down after Labor Day, it seems wise to load up their shelves.
How in the world do people complete a painting in only one pass over the canvas? I’ve done it, but right now it seems like a foreign language that I have never heard before.
It was easy to choose the subjects to paint, and goodness knows, I have hundreds of photos of the same scenes in Mineral King, all in different lights.
Here are four little messes. By “little”, I mean 4×6″. By “messes”, I mean OH NO HAVE I FORGOTTEN HOW TO PAINT??
Each year, summer comes and Mineral King opens at the same time. This year I felt very prepared, having completed 30-40 paintings of Mineral King, many of which sold as I was working on them. Small paintings sell at the Silver City Store Resort, and that is my main place to sell during the summer.
In July, I decided that I still didn’t have enough. There were too many Sawtooths, not enough general subjects, and definitely not enough bears. Because of the difficulty of getting photos of bears, I don’t have much reference material. However, the one bear painting I did sold immediately, so I decided to paint from some of my other bear photos, even though they aren’t that good. After all, if I can draw horses that I can’t see, certainly I can paint bears that I can’t see.
All that was hanging in the painting workshop was the 10×10″ sold bridge and a retouched “Leaving Monarch”.
After a little self talk (Who cares if you don’t want to paint bears from photos that don’t offer enough detail? Would you rather wait tables somewhere? Be a nanny? Pack fruit? Come on, let’s move it, hubba hubba hubba!!), I began two 6×6″ bears, and prepared to do another painting of the famous view from the bridge of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Cabin.
Turning things sideways helps me see the shapes more accurately.
Then I slapped out the 6×6″ painting of the most photographed, painted, drawn and recognizable scene in Mineral King. Very few people notice that the tallest tree, the red fir on the left is no longer there. A shorter red fir is now in that position, but I have a collection of “old” photos that I don’t want to waste. So I paint it and people buy it. (Thank you, Buying People!)
(Lest you worry about my attitude, I actually enjoyed the painting session in spite of the rattling swamp cooler and excessive heat. It helped to listen to The Recappery, where the History Chicks gave a thorough account of an episode of “Anne With An E”. They are so much fun, and they bleep their cuss words.)
Recently, I’ve focused on my weaknesses in drawing and painting. If I can’t see it, it might not be possible for me to draw or paint the thing. But, if I push through and have help and take lots of time, sometimes I can succeed.
If these weren’t commissioned pieces with a paycheck at the end, I would have given up. Much of what I choose to do is speculative work – will it sell? Will anyone care?
But, both of the recent ultra difficult pieces are not speculation art. There were real customers with an idea of what they wanted, and they counted on me to figure out how to do the job. They each gave me as much time as I required, trusting my ideas and judgement.
These are good friends and good customers; knowing my limitations, I wanted to please them in spite of the difficulties.
If I was more business oriented, there would probably be a contract, a down payment, and the contract would talk about things like “Change Orders” and “Photo Availability”.
I showed you the completed Mineral King Pack Station last week (and since learned that the white horse’s eye is too high, but too late, it is at the framer now).
Today, have a look at the completed Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge.
The customer is very happy and so am I!
About the truck on the bridge: the customer’s husband was heading down the hill, while a friend was coming up the hill. When the friend arrived, Mrs. Customer asked the friend if she had seen her husband on the road. The friend said she hadn’t. Later, the friend shared the photo she had taken of the bridge on the way up, and Lo-And-Behold, she had photographed Mrs. Customer’s husband’s pickup-truck on the bridge without knowing it!!
P.S. What is “lo and behold”? I think it means “oh my stars!”. . . My neighbor, who died at age 94, was very fond of that expression, and I think of him every time I hear it.
After doing the 10×10″ oil painting Oak Grove Bridge XXIV, I felt ready to return to the commissioned oil painting that combines the Oak Grove Bridge with Homer’s Nose (AKA Snozz Rock).
It was engrossing work. There were more design changes to be made, and I was eager to see if they made it more appealing, both in the execution and in the viewing.
There is still much work ahead, but now I feel capable, thanks to my little guide buddy, Oak Grove Bridge XXIV.
P.S. Tonight is a public information meeting about the bridge’s future at the Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building at 6 p.m. The plan is to “rehabilitate the bridge” to “correct seismic and structural deficiencies”. Maybe They will explain how, or more importantly, when and how long.
I thought about calling this “Final Chapter”, but I hope I live on to keep painting the bridge and improving with each one.
We made it through about 23 oil paintings of the Oak Grove Bridge. There were repeated views, color adjustments and exaggerations, brighter versions, muted versions, paintings with sharp clean edges, paintings that looked sort of blurry, and the last one from a completely different angle.
Then, I began working on the commissioned oil painting that combines the bridge with Homer’s Nose, a prominent landmark granite rock outcropping. The bridge felt too hard in this one, so I decided to do a smaller version of the exact same view in order to work out some difficulties.
“Difficulties”? I might be a slow learner, or perhaps a bit simple. I’ve painted the thing 23 times and still have difficulties?
Just try to be polite here, ‘kay?
Here is Oak Grove Bridge XXIV in a few steps (although it took many more than a few steps to do this).
There were some shenanigans by some hooligans while I was trying to concentrate.
This photo tells me that perhaps when I have finished all the commissioned paintings and drawings, I might do a bit of shelf straightening.
We made it through Oak Grove Bridge #18. Is there a #19? Yup. All the way through #23, which may or may not be the twenty-third oil painting I’ve done of this, my favorite bridge.
I may have found a clue to the Oak Grove Bridge oil painting numbering problem. I was preparing for a show of oil paintings, and had several new paintings going at the same time. One was on a collapsible easel, and true to its nature, it collapsed and tore the painting on the table behind it. After feeling sick for awhile, I removed the canvas from its foundational frame and sewed it into a tote bag.
Numbering problems continue – there is no #12 or #13, and I jump between Roman numerals and normal numerals (what are those called??)
Now back to the completed oil paintings of the Oak Grove Bridge. I started messing around with exaggerated colors in 2014.
