Story Concluded

I read about St. Simons Island, love the beach, learned that an artist needs to paint plein air, “met” an artist who teaches plein air on St. Simons Island, and met a real person who lives there.

Poppies at the Beach, pencil and colored pencil, private collection.

The real person invited me to stay with her and her family at their home by St. Simons Island.

So, I am going next week. Flying to Jacksonville, Florida, driving to Brunswick, Georgia to stay with my friend’s cousins, meeting Laurel Daniel in person, and joining a three day class on St. Simons Island to learn to paint plein air.

This is Uh-May-Zing. Truly.

Normally I NEVER say that I am going away before I go, because this is the World Wide Web. This time is different. Trail Guy will be home with Scout when she produces our grandkitties and is taking that duty very seriously.

Who knows what sort of stories I will tell you next week? Time will tell if I will be able to post to my blog in real time the experience of being on St. Simons Island, meeting Laurel, learning to paint plein air. If I go silent next week, just figure that I am completely in the moment.

More Story

So far we have learned that I love to read, love the beach, and have wondered if it was possible or necessary to learn to paint plein air.

I have a virtual friend (is that what it is called when you are in touch with someone you have never met in person?) named Laurel Daniel who paints very well. She paints plein air and she teaches a few plein air workshops every year. She even gave me a list of tips and helps when I had to do some public plein air painting 4 years ago. It helped, but didn’t make me feel any more confident or competent. (One painting session does not make an expert.)

Remember that I loved some books by Eugenia Price based on St. Simons Island? That is one place where Laurel teaches. When I learned this, I was gobsmacked by a great desire to attend her workshop there. This probably doesn’t surprise you.

How about this for a surprise? Last summer I was with a childhood friend at her family cabin, and we visited her cousins at their neighboring cabin. Her cousin lives by St. Simons Island! Again, I was gobsmacked.

Beach Birds, pencil, sold
(This drawing is not St. Simons Island.)

Tomorrow I’ll tell you a little bit more.

A Story, Continued

In yesterday’s story beginning, we learned that I liked the beach and reading. Where are we going with all this?

I also loved to draw and figured that when I grew up, I’d live at the beach and be an artist who painted. Instead, I live near and sometimes in the mountains, and I used to only draw. I also paint now, but this has never felt as good as drawing. Doesn’t matter, because I can learn to paint better.

When I began painting, a painter I admire a lot told me that although he is a studio painter, it is very important to learn to paint “plein air”. This means to paint on location rather than from photos. I thought, “Ick, no thanks”. I may have said that very thing, and he responded that it really helps an artist develop skill.

That was in March of 2006, and I did try plein air painting on four occasions. It was much harder than I imagined. I didn’t enjoy the experience (such terrible incompetence on public display) and the results did not please me. I had to do a lot of work in the painting studio afterward to turn them into paintings that I was willing to sign.

Painting plein air in Mineral King in 2007
Painting on location in Three Rivers in 2011.
Painting outside in Three Rivers in 2015.

Why am I telling you all this? Come back tomorrow.

A Story

When I was a kid I loved to read (and still do). My mom took us to the Ivanhoe library, where I worked through the kids fiction section until there was nothing left that interested me. Eventually I realized that some of Mom’s books might be good, and I read a couple of historical novels based on St. Simons Island off of Georgia. Of course I wanted to go there.

As a family, we spent time at both the beach and the mountains (we lived in the Central Valley of California, so both were accessible), but I tended to like the beach best. Now I am torn between mountains and beach, fated to live forever between both.

The Beach House, private collection

Why am I telling you this? To be continued. . .

Learned in March

Juniper IV, oil, 6×6″, $60

It is possible that I didn’t learn much in March. Perhaps I spent too much time on hold with both Huge & Rude and Small & Bumbling. But now we have faster internet, so that’s a good thing.

  1. FWIW means For What It’s Worth. (Thank you, SD!)
  2. Donald Miller has a podcast and is a delight to listen to. I’ve always liked his writing (Blue Like Jazz, Searching for God Knows What, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Scary Close), and now he has a business called Storybrand, where he helps people market their products by telling their stories.
  3. I figured out a new tool for teaching people to draw. (Why did it take 25 years? I didn’t have the tech skills and equipment until a few years ago – there’s one excuse.)
  4. One of my new students taught me a little trick for seeing things when you don’t have your cheater magnifying glasses. Make a mini telescope with your fist, put it to your best eye, and look through it at the thing you are trying to read. It helps a little.
  5. I relearned that everything is harder than one expects it to be. We have Spectrum, finally, sort of. It took 5 days of visits by 6 different installers, and another visit by some sort of technician (or more–I’ve lost track). I still have no phone in the studio, but finally bought enough gizmos to bounce the internet signal to the outbuildings. The sales boy sold this to us on February 7, and now it is April 1. Am I a fool? Nope, but I’ve been fooled by Small & Bumbling into thinking the switchover would be easy.
  6. Posts about walks I take garner more comments than posts about drying paint (unless it is the progress of a mural).
  7. Getting a new book is fun fun fun! (I already knew that, but just wanted to push Mineral King Wildflowers a little bit.)
My new teaching tool shows 4 versions of the same image. The students in my most recent workshop really took it and ran with it. They were very quick to pick up the techniques of drawing.
100 page paperback, flowers in photos, common names only, lots of chatty commentary, $19.78 including tax (unless you pay cash because I’m not making change or unless my website charges you, and I can’t figure out why it does that sometimes and not others.)

More Heart Rock Walk

Should that be “Rock Wock” or “Ralk Walk”? Isn’t English weird?

This is the first one I ever noticed. It is the only pink one and appears to be a broken heart.
When the sun is finally up, oh wow.
But the sun makes the hills in sunshine look weird and washed out. This is another beautiful decorative gate (remember yesterday’s? Probably the same mason.) We seem to live in a gated community.
Doesn’t this make you wish you got up in the dark to go walking in Three Rivers?

More Spring Walking

I looked through the rest of my photos from our afternoon of trespassing in Lemon Cove and came up with more pictures and more thoughts for you.

The pinkish flowers are Owl’s Clover, another wildflower that we don’t have in Mineral King.
These guys thought we might be coming to feed them.
There were lots of fiddlenecks (the yellow flower) in addition to the brodaeia.
Sawtooth barely shows on the far right of the row of white peaks.
Here is an unknown pale yellow flower. It has feathery leaves that don’t show in this picture. I don’t have to know the name because I am not working on a wildflower book anymore.
This is looking toward Terminum Dam and Kaweah Lake. The bright patches of orange on the distant hills are poppies, and from across the lake, they appear as if someone spray painted florescent orange on the hills. Also showing in the distance is Castle Rocks, the granite formations visible from the top of Moro Rock.
This is the Kaweah River in Lemon Cove. I wondered if I was looking at the very same molecules of water that I walked past earlier that a.m. in Three Rivers.
What is this magnificent shrub of red flowers?? I’m so curious, even if I am not writing another book on wildflowers. I’ve never seen this before!
We wanted to see the field of bush lupine, but most have been replaced by lemon trees. I don’t know what the trees are in the background that haven’t yet leafed out.
Hiking Buddy took this photo of me while I was taking photos for you. I just wanted you to appreciate the efforts I go to in order to provide pictures for you all to enjoy! (Thank you, Hiking Buddy!)

Next week I will get back to work and show you some completed oil paintings.

Spring Walking

It is so beautiful and green out! Trail Guy and I went for a walk in Lemon Cove with our Mineral King hiking buddies. Have a look at Sunday’s stroll.

Looking down on the town where we used to live. Our old house doesn’t show, but I refuse to look at it anyway since the 2 huge maples in the front yard got removed.
That is McKay’s Point on the west side of Wutchumna Hill, where the Kaweah River splits off into the St. Johns River.
Lots of these flowers, a brodiaea called Blue Dick. We don’t have them in Mineral King – they are in the flatlands and the foothills.
Aw shucks, look at those hiking buddies together. I need a name for Trail Guy’s hiking buddy. How about The Farmer?
There’s Sawtooth – the white peak farthest to the right.
The bumps off in the distance are Venice Hills. I lived across the road from the north side of this landmark until the end of 6th grade but I never climbed up and checked out the wildflowers.

I didn’t specify exactly where this walk was because it isn’t open to the public. We were trespassing with permission.

Tomorrow I’ll show you a few more photos from the walk, because almost all I am doing with work these days is mailing out Mineral King Wildflower books.

Goodbye, Cowboy

Walk This Way, 2006, oil on board, private collection

Bert Weldon, 1956-2019

Trail Half-Day

Yesterday I promised to show you the hike my walking buddy T and I took one morning instead of our usual ground-pounding fast walk. (This qualifies as a hike because we carried food and water.) We drove about 10 minutes into Sequoia National Park, a little ways past the entrance station in order to walk to Shepherd Saddle.

This was our view when we started around 8:30. Sure felt casual compared to our normal meeting time of 6:00.
We were expecting rain and wanted to test our new parkas, but Sycamore Creek was the only water we saw besides some puddles and a few water troughs for the stock.
Now here is a peculiar sight. Have you ever seen a horse with a perm?
The clouds obstructed most views of the mountains except for a tiny piece poking out.
The manzanita were almost the only flowers we saw.
The clouds were beautiful looking down the canyon.
And here we are, at the gate on Shepherd’s Saddle. We are on National Park land; the other side is a mystery as to ownership.
T gave me a tangerine, and it was so pretty I photographed it before peeling it. We left the emergency M&Ms unopened – please be impressed.
Going home was much quicker. Duh. It was all downhill.
Sycamore Creek already?
We wondered if it had more water flowing on the way back down, but didn’t pursue the question.

Okay, Central California artist, get to your easel and start painting.

Memorial service for The Cowboy
Bert Raymond Weldon, May 21, 1956 — January 8, 2019
CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND RECEPTION Friday, March 15, 2019, 11:00 a.m. CrossCity Christian Church, 2777 E. Nees Avenue, Fresno, California 93720