Walking in Three Rivers

Walking isn’t as easy as it used to be. I walk shorter distances more slowly than I used to, wearing Crocs instead of these shoes, which I now have listed on eBay.

Until the time change, my friend and I walked in the dark. Sometimes it felt adventuresome, as if we were getting away with something. On the days when her schedule isn’t tight, we still go 4-5 miles, although that’s nothing compared to when we trained together for a 1/2-marathon. Still, we are happy that we can walk and can do so in places without traffic, traffic lights, or sidewalks.

In the predawn light
During daylight hours
In the predawn light
During daylight hours

One day recently, Trail Guy and I poked along our street where he pointed out a peculiar sight on our neighbor’s lot.

Not real, mighty peculiar, and completely without an explanation.

I found a small sparkly on the ground, which I ended up securing to the fence of the former day care at the Presbyterian Church.

While admiring the view from the Catholic church, I wondered what the bright red was in the distance. It most likely is a truly spectacularly bright tree. We weren’t so fortunate when we chose our own Chinese Pistache trees, nor when they created volunteers on our lot.

I’ve always admired this barn across the highway, and being November, I also admired some red trees in the distance.

Walking more slowly and going shorter distances does increase one’s awareness of the surroundings. That is a good trait for an artist to cultivate.

P.S. Yeppers, two churches in our neighborhood, neither one “ours”.

SIMPLY HOME

Walnut Orchard, 10×10″, $200

CACHE Gallery hours are Fridays 1:30-4:00, Saturdays 10:00-4:00, Sundays noon-4:00.

Tuesday, November 12, 6:30-7:30, I will give a demo/talk called How To Draw at CACHE. It is full.

Assorted Photos with Chit-Chat

If you look in the shadows between (and beyond) the 2 chairs, you might be able to discern a doe with 2 fawns, probably born that very day.

While getting gas at the Four-way (local vernacular for an important intersection), I snapped this photo. Barns this classic and oak trees this majestic, quercus lobata, are standard but disappearingTulare County items, and when seen together, they should be painted or drawn or just photographed. (If I paint this, I will edit it severely.)

This is called a vitex tree. Doesn’t that sound like some sort of diet supplement? We tend to refer to these as “lupine trees”.

I finished 2 more Mineral King paintings, both 8×8″, drying quickly in the heat.

My friend with the Hume Lake cabin sent me this photo, which might possibly be the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen. Maybe I shall paint it. . . yes, I KNOW it is in Fresno/Fres-yes County but it is a well-loved place, even among us ignorant, fat, uneducated, poor, diabetic Tulare County hon-yocks.

First Mineral King Stay of 2024

On the drive up the hill, I was just astonished by the abundance of yellow flowers, particularly bush poppies, covering the areas that burned in 2021. There were also blazing stars, common madia, flannel bush, and monkey flowers, all yellow. There were some other colors too, but yellow dominated.

This is actually looking back downhill.

I have been working on a painting of a scene, incorporating every cabin below Timber Gap and Empire’s outcropping, in spite of there being no actual place to see everything at once. So, this was a good opportunity to really observe each cabin before all the foliage had leafed out.

I spent several sessions standing in various locations, sketching how each cabin might look in relation to its neighbors.

But I bet you didn’t come to this post to see me go on about my work.

View looking uphill from Lookout Point. The tip of Sawtooth is barely visible, but you can see that Sawtooth is still snow-covered.
Farewell Gap is also very snow-covered.
This is the stream by the Honeymoon Cabin.
The Nature Trail has some snow drifts.
The Spring Creek bridge is not in, but someone went snooping around and found a metal plank and placed it below where the stream divides.

The Mineral King road is still under construction with a fluctuating schedule of closures. As soon as I think I know when it will be open and when it will be closed, the schedule gets rearranged. There were many pieces of equipment parked along the shoulders (such as “shoulders” exist on this road), many piles of dirt, and many places of dropping down to gravel where sections will be repaved. But compared to last summer, it isn’t scary.

Let the summer begin!

Compiling and Amalgamating

Sometimes I see a beautiful scene that just can’t be captured with a single photograph. The light is wrong so the colors come out weird, or there are branches obstructing important views. So, I take as many photos as possible and then put them together in a rough manner using Photoshop Junior. (Photoshop Elements is the “easy version”, in case you are wondering what Photoshop Junior is.)

One spring morning last year, my neighbor and I were walking on a trail above our houses in Three Rivers. I knew it had the makings of a nice painting, but I only had the inferior camera on my phone, and the light was quite low.

I took all these photos anyway. Each one had something going for it, and I hoped that I could patch them together to capture the moment in a believable manner.

Comb Rocks shows well.
strong color on distant hills
nice trail
Comb Rocks
visible flowers
different exposure, more flowers

After putzing around on Photoshop Junior, I decided that a square format looked best. Using Photoshop is the modern version of doing a “thumbnail sketch”, something art teachers always insisted on but never explained properly (like much of what was required in art classes, heavy sigh.) It is a way to see if all the elements look good together, are the right sizes and in the right places.

This is more of how I want it to look, but the trail is going the wrong direction.

I made the distant hills larger, emphasized the colors, made sure the hills included the landmark Comb Rocks, placed the trail where I wanted, and filled the foreground with wildflowers.

I finally got the photos to fit together in the best possible way. Here is the final painting, still untitled.

Now that’s what I’m talking about! I wonder why it took me so many years to learn to use my computer this way. Must be slow on the uptake. . . certainly not an early adopter of tech. . . plodding. . .the way I’ve always done it.

February Flowers in Three Rivers

February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.

I love February. Wish it was longer.

Another Winter Walk in Three Rivers

I love February in Three Rivers, so I walked a route that I haven’t walked in a long time, wanting to test my foot and my ability to endure discomfort. There were plenty of things to distract me, such as stealing a tangerine, dodging traffic, and taking photos.

Looking downstream
Looking upstream
This is an area where I hope to bring a couple of artist friends so we can paint (and maybe swat bugs) together.
A friend said she cannot see the elephant on Alta Peak, so I took this photo and outlined its image in hopes that the elephant shows for her.

I take the same photos over and over, always hoping that I will discover a familiar subject in better light or find another angle in order to make an irresistible painting someday.

P.S. In case you were wondering, 3.5 miles, foot discomfort tolerable, and I figured I could have gone another 1-2 miles without actively looking for a hatchet.

A Winter Walk in Three Rivers

What passes for winter in Three Rivers usually involves sunshine and green hills. Do those folks down the hill know that the fog and gray usually ends at Terminus Dam (Lake Kaweah)?

I walked a new route yesterday. It’s been awhile since I went that way, back before peripheral neuropathy when I could actually walk that far. Now I have to drive there, which feels somewhat counterintuitive when one is seeking exercise. It is busier than my normal routes, there is more litter, and sometimes I have to cross over to the wrong side of the road in order to have a shoulder to walk on. Sometimes it is worth extra effort to experience something new.

Pickleball on a private court
A drawable old tractor

The hills are not fully green yet.
This is a new style of stone pillars.
I prefer the old style
Someone likes retired CHP cars.
My friend used to live here. She died in 2015. I still miss her.
“Bundel”? Come on, people!
A celebrity owns this place.
Nice-looking farm stand; I’ve never seen it open.
Alta Peak, the Kaweah River
A shaggy pony
The oldest residence in Three Rivers
A loading chute, from when cattle were a bigger part of 3R
This bridge in March 2023
The same bridge in January 2024
Recent rain really muddied the water.
That loading chute again.
The oldest residence again.
More modern outdoor walls
Lots of effort on this mailbox. (Those are cattails.)
This barn might be paintable or drawable.
The fountain (hard to see here) is dolphins. With those palm trees, I wonder if these folks moved here from Malibu or Florida or even Pismo.

Starting Over Again. . .

It is time to do a few small paintings to sell at Kaweah Arts. The proprietor requested Sequoia trees and mountain ranges. I looked through my canvas sizes, looked through my photos and made some decisions. Inventory number, title, wire on the back, add to the inventory lists, crop and enhance the photos—all needs to happen before paint lands on the canvas.

Wait! This isn’t a Sequoia tree or a mountain range. What is it?

It is a scene I have wanted to paint for many years, but felt it was a bit too hard. This will be one of my long slow paintings, with many many layers. There is no deadline, and I want it to be Most Totally Excellent.

Okay, this is a standard 6×18″ painting of a big tree, AKA redwood, AKA Sequoia, formally known as Sequoia gigantea, not to be confused with the redwoods of northern California, called Sequoia sempervirens.

WHAT IS THIS???

This is a work in progress, a housewarming present for someone Very Important in my life. She showed me the pieces she has in her kitchen, and I was inspired to ask her what I could paint to add to the collection. (These might not be the actual pieces that she has, but hers are very similar to these.)

The sequoias and mountain range paintings can just hold their camels* for a little bit. I have some designing, improving, polishing, rearranging, composing ahead.

*Learned to say this while in Israel back in 2016 and decided it is more fun than horses.

When I Get Older. . .

“. . .Will you still need me, Will you still read me, When I’m sixty-four?”

Because I am now.

Neither Trail Guy nor I had been to the main part of Sequoia National Park since before the fires (2020, 2021) and flood (2022-2023).

I love to climb Moro Rock, so that is how I chose to spend my birthday. The burned parts of the Park looked terrible, but the road is great and the unburned parts are beautiful too.

Enough yammering. Here are some photos.

Some of the dogwood leaves were changing.
Normally they don’t color up until the end of October.
Lots of steps to climb
We see Alta Peak from our house in Three Rivers so it is fun to see it closer from Moro Rock.
The red oval is circling two almost invisible plumes of smoke from the current fire at Redwood Canyon.
It looks as if the stairs end here, but if you make a sharp right, they keep on aclimbin’.
On the way up and at the top we heard an English accent, several languages we didn’t recognize, and what I think was Korean. Everyone was polite, helping each other out with photos, moving aside on narrow places.
One last look up.

Crescent Meadow was our next destination.

The road there passes the Parker Group, which is a great source of sequoias to paint, along with Tunnel Log, which I’ve also painted several times.

Tharp’s Log is an interesting spot, just about 1/2 mile from Crescent Meadow. I like seeing the human history in national parks.
It is rare to see the needles from a redwood/sequoia tree because they are usually so high up in the sky that you can’t tell what they look like. This time I kept my eyes open for a baby redwood, and voila! here it is. The needles look fluffy compared to pines, firs, and cedars. (They aren’t.)
I took this through the windshield on the way home when traffic stopped. Four Guardsmen is often a traffic stopper. Apparently people forget how to drive when they are in a national park.

The day was an experience in nostalgia. Trail Guy used to be Road Guy, with 37 years of working for Sequoia. Things now look different, because things are done differently than when he retired 11 years ago. Some are an improvement, and some in the category of Are You Kidding??

It was also a day of comparison. Seemed like Moro Rock’s steps were a bit steeper than remembered, and the handrail seemed a bit lower. The Generals Highway was infinitely better than the Mineral King road. The trails were mostly paved and certainly much flatter than in Mineral King. We talked to someone from Germany, someone from Ecuador, and heard many languages that we could not identify. There were lots of people, particularly for a midweek day, AFTER Labor Day.

What a great way to spend a birthday! And, although I wasn’t driving Fernando, it was a business trip because I got a few more photos for painting from.

In conclusion, “Will you still need me, will you still read me, when I’m sixty-four?”

Because I am now. (But not losing my hair—growing it, actually, to save in case I do lose it!)

More thinking

There isn’t much to report on the Mineral King Road. Work is in progress, but there are People in Charge Who Make Important Decisions, and we are the little people not in charge, awaiting those decisions.

Meanwhile, I am in a holding pattern. Do I continue to draw and paint, without places to sell, building up a large body of work? Or do I just go pull more weeds? 

There is a show coming, but it is a Long Way Off (that’s how I am thinking of the show, capitalized, titled “Long Way Off”). I have been thinking, planning, digging through photos, wondering if there is a way to rework unsold pieces, or if I should just paint over the top, wondering if there are too many repetitious subjects, wondering if I am clever and creative enough to paint new subjects that people might want, or if I am clever and creative enough to jazz up the unsold pieces for Long Way Off.

In order to decide what to paint, I chose the subjects, then looked through my existing paintings to see what sizes were already done. I went through my numerous files of photos, and chose ones that stood out. I don’t know why they stood out, but I just went with my gut instinct. 

The categories are ag, the lake, the river, hills, Mineral King, Sequoia, trees, Hume Lake, Balch Park, Yokohl, and of course, citrus with foothills and mountains. In other words, everything I love about Tulare County (plus Hume Lake in Fresno County). In more other words, places I frequent, not too far away, close and close-ish to home, places I know.

There is plenty of time to figure this out. For all I know, the Long Way Off show might decide that I am passé, a has-been, and cancel the show.

I am not worried, simply curious about what might be next for my ever-changing art business.

Now I think I’ll go pull some more weeds.