Napkin Art

A dear friend of mine and I were together a few weeks ago, eating something, and there were some really pretty napkins on the table. We both said, “Wow, that is so pretty”, or something to that effect. She is a jokester, someone with a sense of humor that makes me laugh at the dumbest things. She popped off with, “You can paint that for me!” That is an outrageous thing to say, and it made me laugh.

So, I did, knowing my equally impulsive and outrageous response would make her laugh.

Copyright law says that if the original artist can recognize her work, it doesn’t matter if you change it 10% (that used to be a common but wrong myth).

My excuses are: 1. I changed the scene some; 2. The artist’s name is not on the paper napkin; 3. I am not profiting from it.

Excuses made. I started on a rainy Sunday afternoon at the dining room table, tickled about how surprised my friend would be.

Then I had real jobs to do, custom art with deadlines to meet, so it just went into the Later Pile for awhile. After I finished those jobs with the tight deadlines, I wanted some more fun. Working with these bright colors qualifies as fun in my little world.

The fruits on the napkin are grocery store food; around here in the Land of Fruits and Nuts, California’s Flyover Country where no one knows about us and no one cares, WE FEED THE WORLD!  We have pomegranates, persimmons, stone fruit (my friend’s favorite are plums), and of course citrus. 

I worked from my own fruits, both real and photos, of which I have a huge stack from when little canvases of fruits sold steadily at those boutiques and festivals.

Here it is freshly finished, drying on the wall in the painting workshop. I like mine better than the one on the napkin.

I don’t know if I should even sign this. Is a fruit basket generic and universal enough, along with my tighter and brighter style, that this can qualify as my art?? Did I break the law? Would the original artist care? Do I care when people do this to my work? 

Too many questions.

My friend is thrilled with her new painting, and I am too.

Variety of Irrelevant Items

All these topics are irrelevant to the business of art; I’m showing you anyway because they are mildly amusing and even slightly interesting. If you just came here for the art, you will leave disappointed today. If you just enjoy visiting because you can, then welcome.

We have animals in our yard in Three Rivers.

We have animals at our windows.

You may have noticed that I have a curious mind. There is a gloriously beautiful glowing tree in front of the Courthouse Gallery in Exeter, and I’ve never seen one anywhere else. A red oak of some sort is the best guess my students, Mr. Google, and I could come up with.

Do you know what this tree is?

Forgive Us Our Trespasses

In spite of having more work at once than I can remember in years, I do take time off when I can. Trail Guy and I went trespassing last week. 

There is a tiny bit of green grass, but it is due to a leak, not to rain.

We were trespassing and I don’t want to say where, because pretty soon everyone will figure it out and flood the place and then it will get really locked down. This is what has happened to the Bureau of Land Management area above our neighborhood. It used to be so seldom used that I had to be very very careful when exploring because the trails weren’t clear. 21 years later, the place is crowded.

I photographed the grassy hillside so that when I finish the custom jobs, I can return to the painting of some cowboys on a grassy hillside. My photos of that scene have blurry grass. Yes, it matters. This isn’t something I have much experience painting, so I need to study these things and figure out how to render this stuff believably.

There isn’t much water in the flume, but there are many acorns.

We are ready for rain and snow around here. Really really ready! (My mural can wait for a few storms.)

10 Things I Learned in November

This rose is in someone else’s yard. The deer don’t eat these roses because they are too busy vacuuming up everything in my yard across the river and the highway.
  1. I found a new blog with a superb writer, Marianne Wilburn, called Small Town Gardener.
  2. She also has a great book about gardening, written in her conversational style – Big Dreams, Small Garden.  It is one of the more realistic approaches to gardening I’ve read.
    My herb garden, before all the red leaves fell off the Virginia Creeper
  3. Through Marianne’s writing, I found a fascinating YouTube channel (?) or is it a person to follow; her name is Liziqi, and it is about a young, strong, beautiful Chinese woman who lives with her grandmother and gardens and cooks. What?? Yeppers. Fascinating to watch. (I’ve seen it before but can’t remember when or why.)
  4. I learned in November how much shopping does not appeal to me. Or maybe it is stuff that does not appeal. I’ve never liked shopping, but this really drove home the point. A friend told me about Jane.com, an online shopping mall. I looked, and all the stuff almost made me twitch.  (No, I am not a Communist – thank you for your concern.)
    Leaf peeping is more interesting to me than shopping.
  5. When customers are in a hurry and my schedule is full, I learned to tell them that there is a rush charge. This is the first time I’ve done this, and I had three opportunities in November. This takes the sting out of having to work on Saturdays and Sundays to meet their deadlines. Two of three customers agreed to pay the charge.  The third customer made an adjustment in his hurried plans and said he could wait the normal 2 weeks that we discussed last summer; even two weeks feels like a squeeze right now, but I got the job finished.
  6. There is something new, an alternative to FaceBook, called Parler. I wonder. . . but, no. I have enough to do.
  7. There is something else new, an alternative to YouTube, called Rumble. 
  8. A friend told me 2 really dumb jokes that he was surprised I hadn’t heard before: A. Why does a cowboy want to die with his boots on? So it won’t hurt when he kicks the bucket. B. Why does a man want to be buried in his truck? Because it hasn’t ever failed to get him out of a hole.
  9. I ran across the term “EDM” in a couple of different places and got curious. It is Electronic Digital Music, and in my opinion, it qualifies as an audio assault rather than music. (In an elderly voice coming from inside my head: “My goodness, these young folks today!”)
  10. In-N-Out has good hamburgers. This is a weird admission from someone who didn’t eat red meat for 17 years, and still feels a bit squeamish about burger. My conclusion is that it is the sauce that makes it so good. Wait – didn’t Micky-Ds used to advertise “special sauce”? This was so out of my realm of normal that I felt compelled to share the information. (Thank you for lunch, Jon!)

And here are a few more photos from November that didn’t fit into the list. (Nope, not going to photograph my food – this is NOT Facebook and no one who reads my blog comes here to see my lunch, thank goodness.)

P.S. Can you spot Pippin?

12 Things Learned in October

For a couple of years I have been posting lists of things I learn at the end of each month. This year it feels particularly important to encourage you, Blog Readers, that 2020 isn’t entirely filled with difficulties and mayhem. 

Who are these children and why are they in this post?
  1. Kayaking! It was so fun, and easier than stand-up paddle boarding (well, duh).
  2. White pelicans are huge and don’t dive like brown pelicans do.
  3. Harbor seals and elephant seals are different. Did you know that? Elephant seals are playful and curious, sometimes trying to climb onto kayaks. Harbor seals are much more shy.
  4. A friend sent a Youtube link to a song called Rayburn Crane by someone named Tom Russell – it is about a guy in Mineral King!
  5. “8 million people have left California” – I heard this on a podcast, but the speaker didn’t say in what time frame. I think he must have been speaking of the past 10 years (since the last census). I looked it up, and the main states attracting California refugees are Texas, Arizona and Washington. I know people who have moved to Arizona, Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado.
  6. A little mosquito has been a real nuisance this summer (I didn’t save the newspaper article with the name of the bug.) The mosquito is smaller, it is out in the daytime, you can’t feel it bite, and it itches and sometimes swells up way more than regular mosquitoes. To add insult to injury, it carries West Nile virus. Good grief, what next??
  7. Retail therapy late at night can be expensive. I ordered some clothes from a site, knowing it was probably a mistake. The sizing was wonky, the fabric was cheap, the clothing differed from the photos. In order to return things, the customer has to email and get an authorization code. The company didn’t reply in a timely manner, the 15 day return window started narrowing, and finally the company said they would offer a 15% refund so “you can buy cloth to repair clothing”. Or, if you prefer, they will give you the address in China where the order can be returned. WHAT?? Our local thrift shop just scored some brand new items. Sigh.
  8. Vanilla water – I invented this because my giant bottle of vanilla extract ran out but had some residue in the bottom that I didn’t want to waste. I filled it with water, put it in the fridge, and it was SO GOOD!
  9. Rock stacking – There are cairns or “ducks” along routes where trails aren’t visible, and this differs from rock stacking or balancing. This article goes into depth on the topic. Like almost everything, a little is interesting, copycats turn it into a problem, and then finger-waggers come along and turn it all sour.
  10. This isn’t new, but it has been several years since I showed you – this is the link to the website of an artist whose work amazes me in its brilliance, precision and subtle humor. Her name is Sandra Busby.
  11. This is new information to my blog readers: one of my drawing students had a Cooks Illustrated magazine with beautiful art on the cover. We looked up the artist, Robert Papp, and just swooned over his fruits and vegetables. Later that day, I reached for my favorite stamps to put one on an envelope, and was gobsmacked to see that they were Robert Papp’s work!
  12. I can draw from my computer screen instead of ordering prints. This is a new experience for me. Using both print and on-screen provides the best information, but sometimes there isn’t enough time to wait for professionally made prints; my tired Epson printer is a poor option because it uses too much ink, has incorrect colors, and prints with stripes in the photos.
These girls are here because someone was cleaning out her photos and mailed them to me, and it just was too good to not share. Speak up if you know them!

A Year of Personal Learning

The summary lists continue as I keep working on some private commissions, a fancy Art Speak word for custom artwork.
A friend allows us to glean in his walnut orchard each year at the end of October, which means more food to share with friends. (This drawing won a prize and sold, but I can redraw it for you because I love to draw.)

Personally, not professionally, this happened in the last weird year:

  • Tried and thoroughly enjoyed kayaking
  • Tried and thoroughly enjoyed stand-up paddle boarding (even thought it made my feet hurt – a weird result)
  • Missed church on Easter Sunday for the first time in my life
  • Realized that I like not having social obligations
  • The lock-down reinforced how much I like being at home.
  • We managed to keep 3 cats alive by locking them inside the garage each night (although sometimes they still go rogue)
  • Learned what possessions matter when facing evacuation from both our main home and our cabin
  • Realized how much I depend on the library
  • Learned how thin the veneer of civilization is in our country and how easily people are controlled by fear
  • Learned how people share food with one another as a gesture of love especially in hard times – we got more food brought to us and shared more food with friends than I ever remember in the past.

What’s on your list? (Does anyone besides me do this sort of evaluating and list making?)

Autumn Break

Today’s post is a break for you from my normal bloviations about art.

Something red caught my eye on my commute* out to the studio last week.(Feel free to get a pumpkin spice something to accompany these photo.)

And this, which looks like a symbol of wildfire to me:

Meanwhile, Pippin has been very delinquent, refusing to come into the garages at night, running around like an unruly hooligan. This makes him very tired during the day.

Tucker has had a campout or two, but likes to wait outside my studio for me to finish work.

Two out of three, always two out of three. Jackson is hiding somewhere. When he appears, one of the others will go away. 

We all sleep better when there are three cats safely locked up in the outbuildings.

But wait! There’s more! Why are these August flowers still blooming in October? (Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth).

It was still raining ash and the light was still orange last week when I took these photos. 

P.S. Happy Birthday, Blog Reader Anne!

*50 yard walk? 100 yards? how about 35 seconds?

9 Things I Learned in September

In September I learned nine things, many of which I wish hadn’t been necessary.

  1. Did you know that shower mixing valves come from the factory preset at a low temperature? Did you know that you can adjust the temperature by asking The Duck? (You might use The Google; I use The Duck, as in DuckDuckGo).
  2. AQI – Air Quality Index – Suddenly everyone is discussing the number of the air. There is a website called Airnow.gov  where you can obsessively type in your zip code all day long and then compare your number to that of your sisters in other zip codes who are obsessively typing in their zip codes.
  3. “Meat bees” are not bees, but wasps, actually Yellow Jackets. They don’t live on pollen and nectar, but on meat, usually from dead animals or picnickers. They can sting repeatedly, unlike a bee that dies after it stings. I have made baking soda paste to take out the pain for 3 different cabin neighbors this year. Those dudes HURT, but baking soda mixed with water fixes the pain immediately (and stops working when it gets dry).
  4. When ash falls outside, you can easily locate all the spider webs.
  5. It is difficult to decide if a cough is due to The Virus or if it is due to very bad air. Very Bad Air. Very Bad Air. VERY BAD AIR!!
  6. Tea made from boiled leaves of the Wooly Mullein plant is supposed to be good for respiratory troubles; it tastes like boiled weeds.
  7. When there is a possibility of evacuating one’s home, one quickly decides what stuff matters and what is meh. But the longer the wait to know if one must evacuate, the longer the list grows of what to take.
    Jackson isn’t interested in changing addresses.
  8. We have a tremendous number of helpful, kind, concerned, generous friends, more than anyone deserves. So many offers to haul our stuff, store our stuff, host us if we were evacuated. Really took some of the edge off of wondering what to do. 
  9. Finding truth seems harder than ever, and the topics seem more weighty than ever. You can find evidence, science, experience, and convincing facts for any side to an argument. Do masks help or don’t they? If they work, why do we have to distance ourselves? And if distancing helps, why do we have to wear masks? And if both of those things are the answer, why is so much still shut down? Has global warming caused the fires or not? Will managing forests harm the environment? Don’t fires harm the environment??

Makes me tired. Anyone want to recommend a good book to read as an escape? Never mind. The library is closed again. I don’t want to buy any books. I don’t want to buy anything. If I own it, I’ll have to decide whether to add it to the pile of other things to grab and go, if that becomes necessary.

Salt & Light, or Reading Rabbit, oil on board, 11×14″, Not for sale