My friend/customer LOVED these paintings, including the extra thick canvases. Yea!
However, I studied the orange painting and realized it isn’t symmetrically round like an orange – it is squished on the left side.
Back to the easels. . .
Jumping the Gun With Paint
Do you ever wonder about the origins of sayings such as “jumping the gun”? That is an easy one – it refers to racers (horses? people?) who take off before the starting gun.
In commissions, the “starting gun” is when the customer pays 1/2 down and we decide exactly what she wants. A conversation alone is not the starting gun.
I have had a recent wonderful reunion with an old friend (we are actually middle-aged, not old, and think we met in 4th grade but can’t remember). She expressed an interest in some fruit paintings. We didn’t decide anything for sure, and I didn’t even have the right sized canvases.
But, I’m having a hard time focusing and pushing through and following up. Sometimes life is hard, and it robs one of the ability to do everything one normally would do. Sometimes when life is hard, one just takes the easiest route.
(LBWR, feel no obligation for these 3 paintings – I just felt like tackling the project even though the canvases are thicker than the ones you saw and we didn’t cement the final look. If they don’t suit you, I’ll schlep them around to my fall shows, and I will still paint yours however you would like.)
First pass – wow, these are thick canvases. 
Next, effort into the orange because it got short shrift last time.
Looks good, and the colors are easy to morph into lemon colors. 
Wow, that pomegranate looks awesome, if I do say so myself.
“If I do say so myself” – where did that ludicrous saying originate? I did say so, myself.
LBWR, what do you think of these? I will be painting the sides dark green so they won’t need frames.
Painting Mineral King
This has been a fine season for selling paintings of Mineral King scenes. Very fine! Each time I go by the Silver City Store, I stop to see what is remaining. Sometimes I bring a few new paintings along, other times I just make some notes about what to paint next.
Here are the newest 3 for you to enjoy. (You may buy them, if you beat out the others who are interested.)
Honeymoon Cabin XXII, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $55 (plus tax)
Kaweah Headwaters, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $55 (plus tax)
Oak Grove Bridge, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 (plus tax) It was twice as hard as the others and should be considered a bargain because it doesn’t cost twice as much.
Relevant links to this post:
Too Hot in the Painting Workshop
Because oil painting can be messy, I paint in a workshop building with a swamp cooler instead of inside my real studio with its more effective air conditioner.
We had some of those 100+ degree days, and the swamp cooler was not up to the task of keeping me comfortable. Heaven forbid that a Central California artist be uncomfortable! A hot artist is an uncomfortable artist, an uncomfortable artist doesn’t paint well, an artist who doesn’t paint well doesn’t sell well, and an artist who doesn’t sell well has to get a real job.
So, I took these barely begun paintings off the wall in the workshop and moved into the studio.
I managed to not make an oil painting mess in my little air-conditioned studio, a room normally used for pencil drawing, private drawing lessons, and doing non-messy businessy things.
That back wall has FIVE WET OIL PAINTINGS hanging on push-pins. It (the wall) might now be in need of a new coat of paint.
Nah. It’s a STUDIO, for cryin’ out loud!
Tune in tomorrow to see three of the paintings, finished and ready to buy.
Quail Confusion
Mountain Quail are different from California Quail. One is in the mountains, one is in the lower elevations. I don’t know the specific elevations. Both are in California, but one is the state bird and one is not.
I painted a California Quail working from a photo that I took right out my studio window. Apparently I have been sort of distracted, not paying attention with all my focus.
California Quail, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60
Trail Guy carefully appreciates “his” quail, and pointed out my mistake while reading my blog. Yep, my husband reads my blog. (I might be more interesting on the screen than in person.) Thank you, Michael!! You catch my mistakes and I appreciate it.
Silly me. I should have figured out that dry brownish-yellowish grasses are a sign that the bird is down the hill, not in Mineral King.
You are probably wondering what a Mountain Quail looks like. I haven’t painted one yet, but do have several photos.
It would be easier if they would assume the same position, hold the same pose, so we could carefully examine their differences. But, like their California cousins, they are very skittish, and so far I can only photograph them from indoors right through the window.
Hence, quail confusion.
Selling Makes Me Happy
Selling makes me happy because it validates my worth as a business person. As brash as it sounds to say in words, I am a business person and my product is art and art related services (painting murals, teaching people to draw and occasionally to oil paint, putting together books, cards and reproduction prints of my works for for resale and retail).
I used to have more trouble facing this, but the book Thou Shall Prosper by Rabbi Daniel Lapin really helped me see the truth about earning money.
With Tulare County being the third least educated and the thirteenth poorest county, I often question the wisdom of choosing art as a business here.
However, this is my home, and I love to make art. It is a huge challenge to find, portray and then SELL the beautiful parts of Tulare County.
So, let’s all have a YIPPEE moment as we look at the most recently sold oil paintings of Tulare County!
Maybe you would like to buy an original oil painting portraying the beauty of Tulare County, before I get all fat-headed and raise my prices!
Oil Paintings, Completed!
“Oil Paintings, Completed!” with an exclamation point, because it feels like an accomplishment to have a finished piece. (Currently I have about 6 pencil commissions, all on hold while people ponder their options.)
Backcountry Lake, 10×10″, oil on wrapped canvas, $150
Mountain California Quail, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60
You can click on the price to take you to the page where they are available for sale. Or you can use the Contact button under “About The Artist” in the menu above to buy them. Or you can simply enjoy them here on your screen.
Long Way There
(Happy Birthday, Melissa!)
Anyone remember the Little River Band? Does the song “Long Way There” do anything for you? I loved it in 1978, and I still do.
Many people think of “Long and Winding Road” when it comes to driving to Mineral King. That is probably a more accurate theme song, but I used up that title on a pencil drawing many years ago.
So “Long Way There” is the title of this series of paintings. The first time I painted the Mineral King Road, it looked like this:
I liked it a lot. A friend liked it too and commissioned me to repaint it in a much larger size than I was used to. It just flew out of my paintbrushes, and it may have been the first time I really felt as if I was painting, instead of struggling with paint.
When helping her move a few weeks ago, it surprised me to see that I still like the painting. That doesn’t always happen.
Because I was feeling so confident about this scene, I painted it again, just to have in inventory.
It didn’t sell. It didn’t sell. It didn’t sell.
So, I studied it carefully to see if I could figure out how to make it better. The usual things – brighter colors, more detail, higher contrast, cleaner edges – all seemed necessary.
Long Way There, 12×16″, oil on wrapped canvas, $250
I love the blue with the orange. (Yeppers, I’m a color junkie.)
Wildflower Oil Paintings
Remember these wildflower oil painting beginnings? First, I drew them with my paintbrush.
Stage two was to get the first layer of color down.
The real fun was putting in the detail.
It isn’t often that I get to paint with these colors, and it just makes my heart sing.
Lalalalalalala! LALALALALA!
Excuse me. Got a little carried away with that purplish-pink.
Now I just know you are singing too!
Top to bottom: Jeffrey Shooting Star, Leopard Lily, Foxglove. Yes, I know foxgloves are not native flowers around here, but they certainly go wild!
These are commissioned oil paintings of wildflowers. When they are dry, I’ll sign them, then scan them, then probably wrap and deliver. (It’s a wrap – another wildflower song in the can!)
Ambiguous Oil Painting
(Ambiguous: unclear or inexact.) There’s this 10×10″ oil painting that has been collecting dust and spider webs in my painting workshop for awhile. I’m unclear as to when I began it.
It just hangs there, and after awhile, I stopped thinking of it as a painting. Instead, it was just another thing that the spiders used for support.
Bottom right – Backcountry Lake. The upper one is on the easels again (because it is a little bit too hard for me), the lower left one is finished. But there hangs Backcountry Lake. This photo was taken in April.
All 4 of these other paintings have sold by now, and there is old Backcountry Lake, just hanging around in March. Is that when I started this?? My dates are inexact.
Now the time has come to finish this painting. There might be a show coming up to celebrate the 125th (or 100th?) anniversary of the beginning of Sequoia National Park. (I’m unsure of the show, and the dates of the anniversary are inexact in my memory.) I think this lake is in Sequoia, but I’m unclear as to which lake it is since I got it from my friend Kenny and now we aren’t in touch. I’m unclear as to why we aren’t, but no longer have a working email for him. So, I’ll finish it and enter it in the show, if the show happens. But I’m not sure there will be a show.
Wow. Lots of ambiguity surrounding this painting!
I redid the sky, and then began working my way down the canvas, working from distant to close, which worked out the same as working top to bottom.
Wowsa! Nothing ambiguous about this now! I’ll tighten up the details on the lower right section, sign it and then paint the edges.
This is unambiguously a clear and exact painting! It was very satisfying to correct the color, heighten the contrasts and tighten up the details. That is the most fun I have had with a painting for a long time.
So there.