1. The 2024 Mineral King calendar is still available. At the time of this post, there are 8 left, available through my website or if you email or call me. The Three Rivers Historical Museum no longer has any.
2. I spent 1-1/2 hours on the phone with Apple today to learn why blog subscribers using MacMail or AppleMail cannot see the photos in my blog posts that come to their email. (A few can, but WHY??) No answers came other than that I now need to spend an interminable length of time on the phone with the host of my website. Later. Today’s session used all my reserves for bad hold music and helpers who cannot help.
3. The new painting of fruit is in its home and is just right for the location.
Thanksgiving was a perfect fall day in Three Rivers. We went for a walk to take in the clear air and last hurrah of autumn colors.
Looking upstream on the middle fork of the Kaweah RiverLooking downstream on the middle fork of the Kaweah RiverNice river spot, and from this angle, the trash doesn’t show.This yard just glows in the fall.Yes, I put my feet in.Trail Guy likes to be perched.I painted this scene not too long ago, but in springtime colors.There was a bit of color remaining at the Memorial Building.
My flowering pear tree was a champion this year.
Finally, a reminder for you (and for me, since I don’t get to keep endlessly lollygagging around). Besides, you might like going to Exeter tonight, to their annual city-wide party! I won’t be there but other artists will be at CACHE and all the stores in town will be open and there will be eats and treats. I am a stay-at-home-after-dark-wet-blanket kind of non-party person. But I wasn’t always, and this is a very fun event.
P.S. The commenting part of the blog has been misbehaving but comments are coming through anyway. So to those of you who soldiered through, thank you!
Because I teach people how to draw, it is prudent for me to keep in practice. I have no commissions right now, so this means I can draw whatever I want.
I began a drawing that was full of challenges, showing my students that I follow the same steps that I teach them. Then I had some interruptions to my work life and just set it aside for awhile. When I returned to the drawing, it was hard to focus.
Flowering pear
I pulled out the drawing and decided EVERYTHING was wrong. So I stared out the door for awhile.
Finally I went back to the drawing, following the advice I would give one of my students to see what, if anything was wrong. I discovered one part that was easy to correct, and then decided that I wasn’t focused enough to work on detail. So I went to the blurry, dark, somewhat unimportant background. “Unimportant” in that its accuracy was irrelevant, but important in that it be a support to the main part of the drawing without drawing attention to itself.
I didn’t document the earlier phases of the drawing because it didn’t seem like a potential blog post. The hat was the most important part to me, so I did it first, figuring that if it didn’t look good, I could just toss the drawing without having invested too much time.
You can see a serious erasure under the horse’s chin. That was the easy-to-fix part, and I hope I can bury the messed up part in some background.
I walked back to the house after this bout of serious focused work (fall down laughing). Told you this was distracted drawing, didn’t I?
Wild turkeys and deerFearless deer are vacuuming up the mulberry leaves.
Tucker and the deer don’t really care about each other.
Trail Guy and I like to explore the bottom of Lake Kaweah when the water is low. It’s a good place to ride bikes, ride horses, walk, or walk dogs, not pretty like the BLM land above our house, but spacious and easy to get to.
It changes each season, depending on water flow, rain, water releases, etc. The floods deposited an enormous amount of silt, sand, and rocks, all in layers. We saw this last January before the lake started filling.
In past years, the Army Corps of Engineers has cleared the roads at the lake bottom, but this year it was too difficult. Or something. There must be some reasons, but from my ignorant point of view, I see all that material as useful for repairing all the ruined roads in Tulare County. Apparently not.
We spent an hour or so walking on the sand and dried mud to see how things might be this winter for walking and biking.
The cockleburrs survive no matter what. And Slick Rock isn’t looking too slick.
Lake Kaweah wasn’t a lake until I was about 4 years old, and it has been going through transformations ever since Terminus Dam was built.
Release, pencil drawing, matted and framed to 20×28″, $495
Lake Kaweah is weirdly fascinating, not exactly pretty, but always interesting. (Maybe next time I will remember to take a bag for trash.)
Explosive sneezing and uncontrollable coughing aren’t good for public interaction, so I won’t be at the Holiday Bazaar after all.
Good news:
My friend Elizabeth the Jewelry Maker will sell my calendars at the bazaar. She has been a bazaar and boutique buddy of mine for many years and makes wonderful (and very affordable) jewelry. She will accept checks or cash for the calendars. (Be sure to look over her jewelry while you are there!)
Look at those Chinese pistache trees in the parking lot!
Merchandise that I will have available:
Small original oil paintings, Rural Tulare County coloring books (for grownups and older children), Mineral King Wildflower books (only 8 left!), The Cabins of Wilsonia books (never you mind how many are left), single cards, card packages, and 2024 Mineral King Calendars!
Fall in Three Rivers is often late, subtle, or hidden in smoke. Most of the trees are evergreens, whether a variety of oaks or even some conifers. Some of the deciduous trees are also oaks, and they simply have green leaves that fall off without any hooplah. That doesn’t stop me from hunting fall color. In fact, the few places of color really stand out against all the brown, green, and gray.
After a number of years living here, I know where to look for the prettiest colors. Here are a few of the autumn leaf displays that I anticipate each year.
Virginia Creeper
Flowering pear with a small glimpse of a brilliant Chinese pistache in the distance
Crape myrtle (some special unnamed variety)
Chinese pistache
Redbuds make yellowleaves. (Yes, I know, “yellow leaves”, not one word, but it goes with “redbud” as one word.)
Chinese pistache are the champions of fall color in Three Rivers.
By the time this post goes live, many of these leaves will be gone.
I went to Sequoia National Park twice in October because this place attracts people from all over the world, and it is ONLY ONE HOUR FROM THREE RIVERS!! I don’t go very often because we go to Mineral King, another fabulous part of Sequoia. But when Mineral King isn’t accessible, why not go to the main part of “The Park”, as we refer to it here in Three Rivers?
On Saturday, October 28, I was supposed to go to the Native Voices exhibit unveiling at the Three Rivers History Museum, but this lovely opportunity presented itself. (Besides I thought there would be too many people at the museum.)
Trail Guy and I headed up the Generals Highway with The Farmer and Hiking Buddy. Because we were with other people, I didn’t keep calling for a pullover to take photos even though the dogwood were really getting their fall colors. I have enough photos. (Maybe.)
Climbing Moro Rock is unmatchable in its awesomeness. There is this little nagging thing in the back of my mind that says one day either my feet won’t let this happen any more or The Park will decide that it isn’t safe and just shut it down. That would be tragic.
This time I didn’t take any pictures on the way up. (There were too many people.) What I find surprising is that each time I go, it feels unfamiliar, as in, “I don’t remember this stretch of steps”.
The smoke from the fires in Redwood Canyon was much stronger than 2 weeks previous.
Sawtooth is visible from the top of Moro Rock but none of the signs on the route up Moro Rock naming the peaks go that far south.
A week or so earlier, I learned about the Marble Fork bridge, just beyond Lodgepole. I’d seen it many times, but never paid attention because the Clover Creek bridge is bigger and more noticeable. The Marble Fork bridge has lots of parking, picnic tables, and easy access to the water, but not too many people. Why don’t more people stop here? Because it isn’t highly publicized or signed. Look at this fabulous piece of rock construction:
Look at this little fire tipi; there were several, because the Park has been doing mechanical thinning.
We drove to Wuksachi, with the intent to explore some of the trails around the large area. This was developed in the early ’90s to take pressure off Giant Forest; there are still at least as many people in Giant Forest. It has the museum, big parking lot, the Moro Rock/Crescent Road and all are the first area you come to that feels as if you have arrived.
Wuksachi had tremendous plans for expansion. More lodging, perhaps some little cabins were planned, but nothing has come to fruition. It has three sort of Motel-6-ish units, and a giant lodge (why “lodge” when there are no places to stay in that building?) with a gift shop, lounge area, bar, and restaurant with giant windows and a fireplace.
Wuksachi doesn’t have any redwood trees, and a lot of the area around has been burned. It has many meandering trails, lots of rustic bridges, and it connects to a trail that leads to Lodgepole or Twin Lakes. I’d never been on those trails, and didn’t know Clover Creek ran nearby, nor that you can walk to Lodgepole from Wuksachi. (We didn’t.) This bridge caught my eye because it looks as if it has been there for awhile, rather than the new (from the 1990s) ones throughout Wuksachi’s grounds.
Looking downstream from the bridge, I saw berries that were new to me.
They looked like pyracantha berries and tasted incredibly foul. (No, I didn’t eat one—just put my teeth in one briefly to see what it was like.)
Instead of eating at Wuksachi’s Pizza Deck as planned (too many people), we ate our backup picnic lunch on some abandoned and mostly broken picnic tables off in a sunny place. There are lots of large outdoor storage areas, probably intended for parking lots or more lodging, and they definitely didn’t have too many people.
Then we continued exploring on foot, and I was attracted to other bridges. This one was a driving bridge; the light didn’t seem right for good photos on those other footbridges. (I might need to go back again.)
There is still some road construction on the Generals Highway. On the way down we hit a red light beneath some black oaks with a few leaves beginning to turn their golden fall color.
We were hoping to look across the canyon to Admiration Point and then use binoculars to see if the Colony Mill Ranger Station is still standing.
I didn’t take a turn with the binoculars because I saw penstemon in bloom. Penstemon in late October?!
Admiration Point is across the canyon. I haven’t circled it on the photo; just know it is there.
Thus we conclude another day of not painting or drawing. Next week perhaps I will be more productive, artwise. But sometimes an artist needs a few field trips to refill the well.
Sales of my art have declined. Is it the economy? I assume so, since sales are an economic transaction. The specific reasons are: one of my regular vendors was not open this past summer; another one relied on a now-closed adjoining restaurant for foot traffic; the third place relied on traffic to Sequoia National Park, which was closed until July 1.
What’s an artist to do?
Look for a new place to sell, of course.
St. Anthony’s Retreat asked for some of my paintings for their gift shop. This is close to home, a place where I have painted several murals, staffed by many friends, and is an active place in Three Rivers. It brings in people from all over the valley for various purposes, many of which are not actually Catholic. It is a beautiful place, very bucolic, and they have very good food too.
I worked with two friends there to decide what to put in the gift shop. This is what we chose:
Craig Ranch (on BLM land above St. Anthony’s)Kaweah River (St. Anthony’s is visible on the hillside.)
Alta, Kaweah Lake, Lupine (visible to anyone traveling to St. Anthony’s)
Winding Kaweah, almost visible from St. Anthony’s
Redwoods, painted from the same reference photo used on a mural at Santa Teresita, St. Anthony’s youth center
Yarn! Because there was a knitter’s retreat setting up when I delivered the paintings. (Mama didn’t raise no fool. . .)
Fall is supposed to be a relief from the heat. Last week we hit the 90s, AGAIN. Although my mind has the facts of seasonal changes, doubt holds me hostage.
So, I was seeking signs of fall, anything for encouragement that summer wouldn’t last forever.
The redbud trees in our yard are getting some yellow leaves.
Two red branches are appearing at the top of my flowering pear by the studio.
See? Weird, eh?
The pyracantha berries are getting good color, and the mulberry is getting a touch of yellow in the leaves.
