Sold in Summer

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog. 

Sales have slowed down a bit, which makes me concerned for my sellers and their businesses. However, I remain both busy and optimistic with some new projects pending. That will appear in another post.

Sequoias, some poppies remaining from spring, one commission, and the rest was Mineral King, of course. No pencil drawings this time.

 

But, summer isn’t over, not in weather, nor the calendar. Of course, the calendar says September 21 is the beginning of fall, but everyone knows that Labor Day is the other bookend to Memorial Day, holding together those weeks that remind us of the beach, fluffy reading, swatting mosquitoes, fireworks, watermelon, road trips, cowering in the A/C, and a sense of NEEDING to be off work.

Thus we conclude another peek into the (seasonal) business of art.

A Repair and an Agreeable Customer

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog.

Repair

This returned painting now has a cleaned up sky, new snow on Bearskin and new whitewater in the creek. I photographed it wet, which is why the color looks patchy. It is not actually inserted in the frame, which is why it looks unframed. Duh. I just propped it in the frame so I could photograph it.

Redo for an Agreeable Customer

 This sign was well used and loved for 10 years.

The customer asked for a larger one this time, so I ordered a 20″ round instead of the 12″ version. After applying 3 coats of exterior paint to both sides, I decide that the back of the round would make a more interesting sign than the flat front. The customer is very agreeable, so that’s what I will do.

I used oil paint on the first sign because I was unable to achieve a satisfactory level of detail with mural (acrylic) paints. Because this one is bigger, I am going to try it in the mural paints, and then if the detail needs to be tightened up, I will finish it off with oil paints.

I love these custom jobs for agreeable customers with no deadlines.

 

 

Many Happy Returns (and some not quite as happy)

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog. 

Three Returns

One advantage (and disadvantage) of being in the art business in the same county year after year after year, is that sometimes your art gets returned to you. Some are happy returns, some are hassley returns.

The circle is a sign, painted by me about 10 years ago. The customer was happy and now the disintegrating sign needs to be replaced, larger this time.

The citrus art was for sale at Farmer Bob’s World, and nothing sold. The customer wasn’t happy, apparently. (Who was the customer? No one.) I am happy that I can sell it in a place with greater visitation.

Many years ago when I began oil painting, a friend (because almost everyone in Tulare County is a friend, unless he is a friend of a friend) bought this painting. That friend has moved on to his reward, and the painting was given to the Mineral King Preservation Society. The MKPS brought it to me because it needed a little attention after all these years. This is not a happy return because my friend is gone, but it is a happy return because I can spruce it up.

Interruption: What is Pippin Doing?

If This Ever Gets Returned…

The customers presented this painting to the happy recipient, who got a little teary-eyed. He and I have many things in common, and we just chattered away about various aspects of this painting, such as how the idea was conceived, what exactly is in it, why I left some things out, and how much we love this view. He is sort of like anutter brutter from our utter mutter. (And if this painting gets returned, I’m hanging it in my house!)

No More Return

I returned to this colored pencil drawing. The original concept was to only use the 24 Prismacolor colored pencils in their limited set. Those stupid pencils kept breaking, so I started using lots of other colors too. It reminded me of one of the many reasons I quit using colored pencils.

I doubt if I will be returning to colored pencils any time soon.

Not Returning This Either

About a year ago after a whole lot of trouble, I finally bought a mini fridge for the painting workshop. The freezer is where I store my oil painting palette, a convenient luxury. The big box store was TERRIBLE to deal with. A few weeks ago when I retrieved my palette, it was HOT inside the fridge. Sigh. I unplugged it, pulled it off its pedestal, propped the door open, and now I have to figure out how to get rid of it. I am NOT going back to the extremely inept, incompetent, undertrained, understocked, understaffed, and apathetic big box store. Instead, I will consider it one year of luxury, now both a memory and a hassle. (Learned in June 2021, #10)

Just Twelve Colors

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog.

I have an artist friend in Kansas named Carrie Lewis. I found her on the internet some years ago while looking to see what other artists were blogging about, and how their blogs were working. Carrie works in colored pencil, and because I love to draw, used to use colored pencils, and still help some of my drawing students with colored pencils,I thought I could learn from her. 

A few weeks ago she asked me to write a guest post for her. This is the link: Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and Colored Pencils. 

After she posted it, the ideas started coming for more posts. Along with those ideas came intense summer heat and a desire to cower in my air conditioned studio instead of painting in the swamp-(barely)-cooled workshop.

I own a tremendous number of colored pencils, and I seldom use them for anything except putting color on American flags in pencil drawings and lending them to my drawing students. (I have way way more than these, and this is after thinning them out a few years ago!)

Because I paint using the primary colors, I’ve wondered why I think I need so many colors of pencils. I don’t. I really don’t need them all. Colored pencil manufacturers sell starter sets of 12 colors, and it is a great challenge to see if I can produce pieces using only those 12 colors.

My first set of 12 came from Aunt Shirley for my birthday in 5th grade (age 10, I think). I still have 2 pencils from that set. (I can tell by the typestyle.)

By looking on the internet, I learned the 12 colors that were originally in the Prismacolor starter box. (It was clear plastic and it finally cracked. . . wahhh. It was so cool.) I also learned which 12 colors are in the Polychromos starter set. Then I went through my pencils and filled a box with those 24 pencils, along with back-ups and pencil extenders (circled in photo). The back-up pencils are for Prismacolors, because they break and break and break and. . .

I started a colored pencil drawing using just the 12 Prismacolor pencils.

Colored pencils are difficult for me to get an exact match, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters is making beautiful, plausible, believable, realistic art. Because. . .

Using pencils, oil paint and murals, I make art that people can understand, of places and things they love, for prices that won’t scare them.

Good For Something

If you can’t see the photos, go here: cabinart.net/blog.

It is hot outside. The painting workshop has a swamp cooler, which is good for some temperatures.

The heat is good for drying paintings outside. 

The recently watered studio garden is good for Pippin.

The studio has a little air conditioner in the wall, which is good for days that the swamp cooler cannot handle.

Painting is too messy for my studio, but the studio is good for drawing.

Next week I’ll show and tell you what I am doing inside as I cower in the A/C, hiding from the heat. We Central Californians are mostly used to very hot summers, and we know how to deal with them.

Welcome to the World, New and Improved Oil Painting

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, and the photos don’t show up, you can see them by going to the blog on the internet. Tap or click cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

When paintings are slow to sell, it is a good art business practice to analyze them. This is best done with the help of someone who knows the customers. 

Recently I took a hard look at this painting, one that I had always liked, because I love seeing dogwood in bloom around redwood trees. But what if I am the only one who feels that way? I am here to earn a living, not to paint for myself. (Well, sometimes I do allow a painting to live in my house for awhile, but that isn’t the main point of all the easel time.)

I asked the proprietor of Kaweah Arts why she thought this hadn’t sold yet. She and I have been friends for many years, always honest with one another. I told her that I figured most of her customers don’t even know what dogwood is, because the bulk of them visit Sequoia National Park in the summer when the dogwood isn’t in bloom.

She very diplomatically replied that her customers are interested in the big trees alone. Of course they buy other items, but sequoia trees are what Sequoia National Park was formed around.

Together we evaluated the painting, and then I told her to remove it from the inventory list, because I was taking it back to the easels.

This is how it went.

Welcome to the world, new and improved

“Redwood, Dogwood”, oil on wrapped canvas, 12×16″, $325.

Odd Job, Chapter 3

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Yesterday’s post about refreshing 2 signs left you hanging. I hope the anticipation of today’s continuation didn’t disrupt your sleep last night.

After applying 2 coats of the rim color, some confidence began developing. Time to tackle the narrow yellow line. You can see the old color in the middle; I put a bit of white on the left, and some brighter lightfast yellow on the right.

The yellow needed some red, along with a touch of white.

You might be able to tell that the upper yellow is now better, but since the lightfast yellow is transparent, it needed a primer coat beneath. No need to color fuss here because the goal is to make it look good.

As I painted the narrow line with white, I realized that the wood is quite splintery. This means that getting a smooth edge isn’t going to happen the entire distance on any of the sign. But, it is a sign, not a piece of fine art to be viewed closely.

With the warm weather, swamp cooler blowing, and big doors open, the paint dried quickly. I could paint one sign, turn and do the other, go back to sign #1 for the second coat, and then turn and second coat sign #2.

The white letters seemed like a good next step. These also soaked up the paint and required 2 coats. The rough edges bothered me at first. Then I remembered that this will be viewed from inside people’s cars, until they stop noticing at all. After 5 hours, I felt an unavoidable slide into Idiotland, where Sloppy, Stupid, and Careless all reside. Besides, my cheater-readers kept falling off when I leaned over the sign, and then I painted a blue streak on my face by accident.

So, that’s all on this Three Rivers custom art project for today. The quail and the narrow gray line surrounding the letters will require a strong focus (and a better fitting pair of cheater-reader glasses).

Odd Job, Chapter 2

If you subscribe to the blog and read the email on your phone, the photos might not show up. (Some people get them, some do not; it isn’t a problem I know how to solve.) You can see them by going to the blog on the internet. It is called cabinart.net/blog, and the latest post is always on top.

Because I am an artist in a small town, I get asked to do a variety of things.

This keeps me growing, learning, and becoming more capable of doing more odd jobs. Still, I start out a little unsure of where to begin and unsure of my abilities to git ‘er dun well.

The outer rim of each sign is a grayish blue, or perhaps a bluish gray. It looked pretty straightforward, both in the mixing and the application. I put these 2 colors together and made the gray on the top of the lid.

You can see that I tried a few versions.

Because my gray had a purplish cast, I put in a smidgeon of yellow, which is opposite purple on the color wheel. (The ArtSpeak word for that is “complementary color”, as in “complete” because its presence completes the 3 primary colors which can be blended to make every color in the world. Not white. White is the absence of color.)

A touch more white, and then it was close enough. 

Clearly I had to be very very careful because Pippin was underfoot.

Let’s continue tomorrow, shall we?

You’re an Artist, So Could You. . .? (Odd Job)

I recently bid on an odd job, one of those that comes to me like this: “You’re an artist, so could you. . .?”

This was a request to repaint 2 large redwood signs, originally sandblasted and painted in 1990.

The neighborhood’s budget didn’t match my bid, so I suggested that they do the scraping and sanding. They did, and then brought me the signs (there are 2 and this one gets the most sun so looks the worst).

Ready to work

Trail Guy set up 2 work tables using sawhorses in our painting workshop. (He doesn’t paint, but the workshop is also his place, so I can’t say “my painting workshop”.)

I set aside the unfinished Mineral King oil paintings that have no deadline in order to get this job done quickly for this Three Rivers neighborhood.

The subdivision asked me to seal the sign for sun damage protection. I know nothing about this. Mixing colors, refreshing tired paint, that’s what I know.

When you don’t know something, ask someone who does. Preferring someone with experience over someone with an opinion, I began thinking of people who might have knowledge to share.

My first contact was an old friend in Massachusetts with a sign business who referred me to someone in Mendocino who was kind enough to email me. I also found a sign company online in Charleston, South Carolina, filled out their contact form, expected and got nothing back. I called the man who sanded the signs to see if he knew who originally made them; he gave me the name and number of someone I worked for briefly back in 1986 (and have encountered several times since because that is the nature of Tulare County). That man gave me the name of a sign company that he thought might have made the signs, but they are going out of business. Their answering machine says to text with any questions, and so far, silence.

Next, I will show you my painting progress and process while I wait to see if Mendosign replies to my specific question about a sealant.

 

Messing With Other People’s Art

There have been several times in my career when I have been asked to change someone else’s art. I have repaired a torn canvas, changed a boulder in a painting that looked like a skull, fixed a child that looked like a little hunchback, and brightened colors in a dull painting. All these were done without knowing the original artist, and with assurance that the original artist would never know.

The Mineral King Room makeover was a different story. The original designer is highly educated, experienced and respected in The Art World. I am somewhat known in the local Art World, but I try to keep a low profile when it comes to any formal types of situation where I might be outed as a total DBO, mostly self-taught, Tulare County native. (You know how I feel about ArtSpeak. . . ugh.) 

I respect the original artist of the Mineral King Room and understand that she put a lot of thought into the design. The folks who approved the design were awed by her work, and didn’t think that there would be a strong reaction to the teal color and the stylized mountains, which were all effective from a designer’s point of view.

The approvers were mistaken about the reaction, which was strongly against the color and the mountain shapes. This necessitated a call to your Central California artist, who also is the local Mineral King artist.

The designer wasn’t pleased when she learned that I would be giving her design a makeover. (What artist would be??) I don’t blame her, because she chose all the shapes and colors based on her design expertise, to provide the best interpretive background for historic displays. She was professional and polite, while sounding as if she was defending a dissertation, not in a defensive way, but protective and offering the rationale for her design decisions.

My approach, on the other hand, also based on training and experience, is to simply please the customer. (My very wise dad taught me the all important business principle of “You kiss their fanny and take their money”.) We have to think about who the visitors and supporters of the Mineral King Preservation Society are, and what they will understand. The answer to that is that they love Mineral King, not a stylized version of it. (“Nosirree, I’ve climbed Sawtooth, and that ain’t it!”)

This is how the mountains surrounding the Mineral King valley really look.

So, with respect to the designer, who is very good at what she does, I just dove in and “corrected” her work. I don’t mean that it wasn’t good; it just wasn’t right for the audience.