Random Information

Sometimes I have a head full of random facts to tell you that don’t want to wait for the end of the month round-up of things learned in the month.

  1. The Oak Grove Bridge, my favorite subject for drawing and painting, will be “retrofitted”, a fancy term that means reinforced to make it safe while keeping it as its same beautiful self. This is a huge relief to me; I was picturing myself chained to the bridge to prevent its destruction, wondering if anyone would bring me dinner or mosquito repellent, and wondering how much it would cost to be bailed out of jail.
  2. I visited Hume Lake for a few days with a friend from childhood at her cabin. Still the Sierra Nevada, but very very different from Mineral King. 

    Hume Lake, from on the water
  3. There were wild iris blooming there – what?? They bloom in early May along the lower part of the Mineral King Road in the shady drainages. Hume is around 5000′ in elevation and they were in hot dry places. My friend thought it was a bit odd to keep photographing them. Perhaps it was. . .
  4. Her cabin kitchen was retro and charming. 
  5. The dam on the lake is historic and impressive.

    Dam creating Hume Lake.
  6. I missed my kitties and continue to wonder how I will tell Piper from Tucker when Tucker is grown.

    Piper is tired from rolling in the dirt, and Tucker thinks his tail is a toy.
  7. Before I left, I began a new pencil drawing.

    Pencil drawing with a touch of color for the upcoming 2019 calendar.
  8. I love to row a boat and was tickled that neither of my friends wanted to take over the oars.

    These are kayaks; my friends and I were the oldest people on the lake and the only ones in a rowboat. We were also the only ones singing.
  9. The painting studio is a mess, but a recovered couch and chair will happen soon.
    Is this mess a place??

    And thus we conclude a list of random information. 

    Today’s painting for sale: 

    Sunflower, oil on 8×8″ wrapped canvas ready for hanging without a frame, $108 includes sales tax

Sit On It

Have you heard that thing “Sitting is the new smoking”?

Hogwash.  

Been thinking about chairs recently. My cabin neighbors are replacing some living room furniture, and it would be awful if their old pieces went to the dump. My couch needs recovering, so why not cover theirs from the ’40s and dump mine from the ’80s? And if I move a chair from the living room to the studio, I can put theirs in the living room. . .

The neighbor’s old chair
My newly recovered chair

This blue chair from the living room could replace this red one in the studio. The red one is very hard for people to get out of, so this makes sense.

Studio chairs

The red chair is outdoor furniture. (What kind of dork puts outdoor furniture inside? This kind of dork, that’s who.) Sorry, the wooden chair isn’t for sale. I could draw it for you. . .

Today’s art is of chairs, all pencil or colored pencil drawings:

Favorite Parking Place, colored pencil, framed to 14×18″, $300, available here
Cabin Kitchen Corner, pencil, framed to 11×14″, $150, available here
Cabin Retreat, colored pencil, 11×14″ unframed, $150, available here
Willow Window, pencil, approximately 11×14″, unframed, $75, available here
Hidden in the Leaves, pencil, unframed, approximately 8×10″, $100, available here
Rock On, pencil, framed to approximately 11×14″, $200, email or use the contact button to buy because it isn’t on my website
Cabin Chair, pencil, framed to 11×14″, $150 (also available as cards here)

I could keep on going, but this is just getting embarrassing. What is the deal? Am I a closet sitter??

Things I Learned in May

  1. There is something called “Allergic Pneumonitis” that you can get from breathing the dust of certain tree bark and sawdust. I learned this the hard way.
  2. When bad things happen, such as Allergic Pneumonitis, the best question is “What does this make possible?” What it made possible was uninterrupted time for me to work on my new website. Not ready yet, but I sure have been learning how to operate new computery things behind the scenes.
  3. Roundworm makes kittens have round bellies. (You are welcome.)
  4. Manx cats are an unnatural, human perpetuated “breed” of cat. There are “stumpies” with a stub of a tail, and “rumpies” with no stub whatsoever. Sometimes they happen by accident; sometimes breeders try to create these creatures. The “rumpies” often are undeveloped in many critical body parts. I’ve heard that when cats are born this way without either parent being like this, that it has to do with malnourishment in the womb. Whatever it is, I won’t be making the mistake of choosing such a creature again. Sigh.
  5. One of the best memoirs I have read in awhile is Educated by Tara Westover. WOW and WOW. I must have learned something. Mostly I was completely captivated by her courage, toughness, fantastic writing, and brilliant mind.
  6. Maeve Binchy has been my favorite novelist for many years (I named a cat after her). In May I discovered Monica McInerney, whose characters are as complete and stories are as engrossing as Maeve’s. (The only drawback is that she treats sex like a spectator sport. With paper books, unlike audio books, one can flip past the parts that don’t enhance the storyline.) Family Baggage might be the best I’ve read of hers so far.
  7. Lots of successful people listen to talks over and over by people like Zig Ziglar, Og Mandino, and Brian Tracy, all motivational speakers who help people set and make goals. I learned from one of those guys that “We become what we think about”, and that we have to write down goals and read them every day and think about them. But what I really learned is that I am fairly goalless, just drifting along on auto pilot. This is a topic for further exploration in another blog post down the road.
  8. Ever heard of “bullet coffee”? I have no idea why it is called this. People put coconut oil or butter in their coffee, sometimes running it through a blender. I had no idea why they would do this, since I am still stuck with one foot in the land of Fat-Is-Bad. But I learned that the fat slows down the caffeine in one’s system. Hmmm, why isn’t it called “time release coffee”? 
    Sometimes Piper just needs to park on my briefcase and join me as we contemplate matters of consequence.

    P.S. I forgot my resolution to show my paintings regularly, so I’ll start again now.

Moro and Alta, 6×18, $160 with the sales tax in California.

Hot Wheels

Does it seem as if I am obsessed with Hot Wheels? My older sister’s first car was a ’68 Mustang, which was thrilling after only having giant station wagons and farm pickups at our address. Then I discovered Honda Accords, and have owned nothing but since about 1981. (This topic doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the business of art, but I do like good cars, and this is my blog. So there.)

My friend has a great looking 2007 Mustang convertible. Her mom bought it for herself on her 80th birthday, and my friend inherited it.

Samson liked it.

It appeared in my coloring book.

It was parked outside the workshop when I handed my friend the binder of drawings for the first coloring book. She is a quiet person, and when she was finished looking through the pages, she looked outside and calmly said, “Did I see my car”? I’d like to be calm, but I probably said something like, “HAR HAR HA HA HA IT SURE IS!”

And I like it.

But, I still wouldn’t dream of owning a car that my mechanic of the past 35 years won’t work on. Foreign Auto Works in Visalia only works on Honda, Acura, Toyota, and Lexus. So, Hot Wheels is just for fun, not something I aspire to. And it is fun, indeed!

Back to the Easels, Sort Of

After spending a weekend at the Redbud Festival discussing and hanging around with my oil paintings, it was time to resume painting. I have 6 Mineral King paintings to complete before the show at the Silver City Store on June 30. There’s plenty of time. . . good thing, because the distractions continue.

Before beginning to work on the remaining 6, several other paintings needed to be retouched. I noticed that a few skies had some green paint smudges. How did this happen? Probably by moving them around before they were fully dried. But I had to be very very careful, because these four were hovering around my work space.

Left to right: Tucker, Heidi, Scout, Maeve
Skies reblued, terrible photography.

This painting of a Big Tree seemed to not be quite right to me. I reblued the sky, brightened the highlighted edge, and put a tiny bit more light green on the ground.Meanwhile, these guys wanted to know what was going on over their heads.

Then I finally began working on the 6×18″ of Timber Gap with lupine in the foreground. Wow, tedious stuff.But, plenty of interruptions kept me from falling asleep at the easel.

Trail Guy stopped by to visit with the kittens. Then he did a bit of yardening.

It was a sad day at the easels, because it was our last day with Maeve. We were correct in our assessment of her state of unhealthiness. She is a sweet-natured little fuzzball, but she isn’t going to ever grow up right. Cats with no tails and no stubs of tails often have trouble, and she was one of those types. We took her to the vet yesterday to have him do the deed, and THE VET TECH ADOPTED HER!! She will know what to watch for and will be able to get Maeve the help she needs when she needs it.

We were blessed to have this little kitty in our lives for 2 weeks, and now are ready to see what happens with the others. Tucker and Scout are our buddies, but Heidi hisses whenever we reach toward her for any reason. Maybe we’ll change her name to Hissy. Little Miss Hissy-fit.

Bon voyage, sweet little Maeve.

Painting With Kittens

No, I’m not painting WITH kittens; no, they aren’t helping me paint; no, this doesn’t mean I have a painting with kittens as the subject. I’m painting with a paintbrush while the kittens are present and active.

This kitten is less playful than the others; we aren’t convinced that she is healthy.
She is a lovable little fuzzball, named “Maeve” after my favorite novelist, Maeve Binchy.
Why are there only three kittens here?
Because this one, the smallest, bravest and most adventuresome is climbing my skirt. Her name might be Scout, although we have used that name previously and I don’t like recycling names.

The other two kittens hang out together quite a bit; one hides the most so she is “Heidi”, and the little black one is “Tucker” because he is cute like Tucker Carlson.

I WAS painting, I was, I was!! See?

April in Three Rivers II, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×10″, $125 plus tax

6 Things I Learned in April

  1. If you don’t know how to tell a sheep from a goat, remember this: goat tails go up, sheep tails go down. (You are welcome – I’m sure this will be useful information to you at some time in your life.)
  2. Glazed ceramics are porous- who knew? We have this pretty bottle for dish soap sitting on the kitchen window sill. Trail Guy kept telling me that the outside of the bottle was slippery with soap, and I just couldn’t understand how that could be. Then one morning I saw what was happening:Soap is seeping through the almost invisible cracks in the glaze. Weird.
  3. Flying in a helicopter is magical. I always thought it was fun (except for that med-evac off Sawtooth when I was 16), but now I am convinced it is magical, EVEN WITH THE DOORS OFF! MAGICAL!

    I’ve walked on that road down there many times.
  4. If you make yogurt from scratch and use store-bought vanilla yogurt for the starter instead of leftover yogurt from your previous batch, it is REALLY good. (Yeah, I know, who makes their own yogurt?*)
  5. The place where the Dodgers play is called Chavez Ravine. No reason I should know this because this is a house of Giants fans (well, really only one, since I’m fairly indifferent to sports). Never heard of this until April when I drove past it and my sister, wife of a Dodgers fan, asked me to photograph it as we were passing AND a friend of mine was the recipient of the Dodgers make-a-wish type deal and mentioned Chavez Ravine. (No one in my life who loves the Dodgers reads my blog, so I could take this opportunity to really jab at them. But, as I mentioned, I am fairly indifferent to sports, so I’ll let the moment pass.)
  6. I’ve been doing Roman numerals wrong. I thought you could put smaller numbers to the left to subtract, but that only is acceptable on the number 9. So, 9 is IX, but 14 is XIIII. I think IXV is more efficient, but someone else made the rules. (I am taking the word of someone smarter and more educated than I am, but I haven’t consulted The Google yet.)
  7. UPDATE ON ROMAN NUMERALS: Only 4 and 9 use the “subtractive notation”. 4 is IV; 9 is IX. This means that 14 is XIV, not XIIII. So, I was right about smaller symbols on the left, but I did it the wrong way. I wonder how many of my painting series are numbered incorrectly?

*Me, that’s who. I make my own bread too. No, I don’t drive a Prius. . . they don’t come in stick. Besides, how smart is it to pay $30,000 for a car just to save some gas money? And what happens to the old battery when it is time to buy a new one? And doesn’t the making of the electricity to charge the battery have a more negative effect on the environment than burning gasoline?

Flowers in My Yard

April is the most beautiful month in Three Rivers and that includes my yard. Our yard. Trail Guy is great with the big stuff like heavy pruning, sprinkler systems, and power tools. I weed, plant stuff, and do girly pruning.

Ajuga grows in the shade and is a very low ground cover, except in April when it shoots up these blue spikes, which always show up purple in photos.
Lilac smells fantastic.
Fairy Lanterns are all over the hill on the backside of the property.
Lovely lavender – I have several varieties, all blooming at once. Never can remember how to tell French from Spanish, but I know this one isn’t English.
The blurry yellow blossom is a Jerusalem sage, about to grace us with its first flowers. The iris is a fantastic light periwinkle color, and that is rock rose in the background.
Fiesta flower is wild and goes bonkers all down one side of the driveway each year.
Rockrose!
Rock rose shrubs get kind of huge-ish, but my girly-type pruning keeps them in check.
Dutch Iris? Japanese Iris? Siberian Iris? Doesn’t matter – it is my FAVORITE.

The state flower, California poppies, always more orange than yellow when grown in a domestic yard.

P.S. I have one power tool, and when/if it starts, it is great. It is one of those “easy to use” rototillers called a Mantis. I call it other things when it won’t start. Sometimes I just use an old tool that Grandma gave me instead. She also gave me her love of flowers. Today is her birthday, but she isn’t counting birthdays in heaven.

April Distractions in Three Rivers

I tried to oil paint last Friday but the greenery and wildflowers overcame my sense of duty. So, Trail Guy and I drove up North Fork Drive to the end.

My palette was ready to go.
I worked on Sawtooth a little.
After telling Trail Guy that I’d heard the flowers were great up North Fork and staring out the window a bit, he said, “Let’s go now!”

The road was longer, rougher, narrower than I remembered and all very worth the drive.

The last 3.5 miles are unpaved.
This is Yucca Creek at the end of North Fork Drive.
That’s one narrow little footbridge over a massive old culvert pipe.
Wowsa.
The yellow flowers are called Madia.
Heading back down has a view of Ash Peak with a blooming yucca and bush lupine.
Looking over the edge down to the North Fork makes one glad to not encounter any oncoming traffic on that narrow road with no turnouts.
Poppies are yellower in the wild than in my yard.
The poppies on the hillsides are what gave California its name of “The Golden State”. (Bet you thought it was the gold rush)
I love Fairy Lanterns, AKA Satin Bells. Pink isn’t my favorite color, but it is rare enough in nature that it stands out.

After we got back home, I painted a little bit more. There is this commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth for a very patient customer, and it would be good to make progress.

Sawtooth’s shape is improving, and it is acquiring colors and texture.

Then, I got distracted again and thought that wildflowers would look great on a 6×18″ canvas. Can you see the possibilities here? (Put on your rose-colored glasses with me!)

Planning a wildflower oil painting.