Does this look finished to you? It’s not. When I was driving home a few evenings ago, I really studied the way the ridges change color as they recede into the distance.
So, I messed with them again. The differences are subtle, and now that I see it on my screen, I think it might even want a bit more adjusting. (The painting that never gets finished. . .)
Now there are oranges on the trees.
The blossoms popped out on the trees, and there are a few added in the border embellishment.
Now the smudgepot has been refined, the ground is lighter, the fallen oranges are a bit more visible, and there are two more smudgepots in the far distance, too small to see in this photo.
All that remains is a wind machine.
Maybe.
This is representative of Tulare County’s best features, according to me. The weird part is that I compiled the original pencil drawing using photos taken in Lemon Cove and Pauma Valley (in Sandy Eggo County.) I’m not showing you the pencil drawing again in case you are going to tell me all the ways I didn’t match it exactly.
Because it is raining while I write this, I am thinking about water. A few years ago, we had a very wet winter after several dry ones, and I became obsessed with watching flowing water.
Here are some of the results. I was quite pleased with the drawings and pretty proud of the titles too. (There were more, but they sold.)
Every Drop, matted and framed, 15×17”, $400
Life Source, 9×12”, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Rock and Roll 2, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Turbulent Times, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Frozen and Flowing, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Liquid Fury, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Steady Stream, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
Wet and Wild, graphite on archival paper, unframed, $250
All the unframed pieces are 9×12”.
I’ve had these too long, and this is a slow month. So, for the rest of the month of March, THESE ARE NOW ALL HALF-PRICE! (half of what is written beneath each one here on the blog) See? Reckless.
(Oh hush up, snobby Art World who says art should never be discounted! I’m in Tulare County, and I’m the boss of my art.)
They aren’t on my website, so you’ll have to talk to me in person, text me at five-five-nine-561-7606, or email me at cabinart-at-cabinart-dot-net (both written this way so the cyberjerks don’t mess with me.)
Yes, there will be sales tax.
If they don’t sell, I might just shred them. Ooh, feeling really really reckless!
“Reckless” is a weird word. If one is feeling reckless, one might not remain wreckless.
A commissioned pencil drawing for a retiring Visalia city council member in 2022.
This post is just to vent my thoughts about a day spent in Visalia. It might fall into the categories of “Why is She Bloviating Again?” or perhaps “Too Long, Didn’t Read”.
I headed down the hill to Visalia one morning and was tailgated around the lake. What does tailgating accomplish when there is no place to pass and the tailgatee obviously cannot drive any faster than the person in front of her? The tailgater ignored the first 2 passing lanes, and then roared around at the third one. Good riddance. (See you at the light at the four-way, if I’m careless and you are lucky.)
My first stop in town was one of those giant office stores to get some papers shredded. There are 2 on the same side of the same busy boulevard, and I picked the wrong one. “Wrong one”?, you may be asking. This one apparently had only one employee who was running his feet off. It also is the one where the customer has to stuff all the papers in a bin, rather than the employees just taking care of it.
I survived. That sort of situation with waiting and inconveniences is a chance to just look around and observe folks. I saw 2 other women near my age, and all three of us had our hair up in those claw-type clips. There was an obese man in a cart who felt the need to explain to the clerk (a second employee eventually emerged from a break room) that he had been a dedicated baseball player who played on winning teams until age 38. No one seemed put out by his need to explain why he requires a cart to get around; the dude was obviously very lonely.
There was a quick stop to unload a box of unnecessary items at Rescued Treasures, a thrift shop enterprise run by the Salvation Army the Rescue Mission. It was close to the wrong giant office store, so maybe that wasn’t the wrong one after all.
A kind and generous friend had given me a gift card to Sprouts, which is a fancy grocery store with bright lights, organic foods, and shockingly high prices. My hope was to buy raw milk, something I have been curious about for a long time. (My interest began when I met some people associated with an Arizona dairy called Fond Du Lac Farms.) Alas, it wasn’t meant to be because their shipment hadn’t arrived for the week. Another customer was waiting for it and he told me that he pays $17 a gallon. I would have been quite content with just a pint, but that curiosity will have to wait.
The prices almost made me need oxygen, and the lights were so bright that I wondered if sunglasses might be in order. I wandered around the store, reading labels, thinking, doing math, not wanting to waste the gift card on stupid stuff. Finally, I chose some lunch meat and a tray of sliced cheeses to share with friends on an upcoming outing, found some herbal tea that supposedly fights blood sugar levels, and a few mixed nuts that promised no peanuts (because they are just too pedestrian for Sprouts’ customers). The checkout was a self-serve with a friendly worker there to assist. The total for my four items was $29, which was $4 over the gift card. (I thought it was better to be over and pay some cash than to have to return to use up one dollar.)
Next, I headed out to find another new grocery store, about which I have heard great stuff for several years. Aldi’s is on the far south end of town, bringing to mind a threat in my childhood that “one day Visalia and Tulare will be merged into a single town.” Hasn’t happened yet but the growth is steady in that direction.
Aldi’s is known for charging 25¢ for its shopping carts, which gets returned to you when you put the cart back in the corral. (It locks into the cart behind it to spit your quarter back out.) I wandered around the store, comparing prices with those on a Winco receipt, trying to be smart about spending. I bumbled and fumbled through the self-checkout with its pushy computer voice telling me to either scan the next item or finish and pay. I kept telling “her” (it didn’t announce its preferred pronouns but the voice was female) to just hold on. Oddly enough, the total was also $29, but this time I got eleven items.
My grocery list was barely touched, so next I headed to Winco, my normal grocery store. I try to only shop every 6-7 weeks, with Trail Guy supplementing for dairy and produce at our local overpriced but convenient market (Let’s see. . . 1-1/2 hour driving and $15-20 for gas to save money? Nope.) It was a thrill to quickly find just what I needed at prices I was accustomed to paying. It had only been about 5 weeks, so the cart was manageable. Sometimes I almost need 2 carts when I wait too long between trips.
It was a massive relief to finally be on the freeway heading east into the mountains. The foothills are green, the sky was blue with puffy white clouds, and although there were a few tailgaters, I was heading home and didn’t care. Does it bother anyone else when people try to force you to pull behind a big rig so they can drive 80, not caring that you are quite happy to go 70, which is 5 miles over the speed limit, not caring that you don’t want to drop to 55 or 60 behind a big rig? What is wrong with people?
Here is my theory about what is wrong: people live in crowded conditions, with too many stores, too many choices, too high of prices, too much to do, too little quiet and privacy. It makes them anxious and cranky and impatient. Or, to quote Anne Lamott from her Twelve Truths of Life: “Everyone is screwed up, broken, clingy and scared.”
P.S. Dennis Prager wrote about this topic several years ago:Imagine No Big Cities. (Thank you, DV!)
Mustard is the earliest wildflower in the foothills.
Cockleburs are horrible. I think they are native to this area. They don’t mind getting drowned each year—it seems to be what causes them to thrive.
This is looking downstream toward the dam. The lake is very low, to make room for the winter rains and spring snowmelt, always a situation we hope takes place.
This isn’t a very pretty walk, but the blue of the river takes the edge off of all that grayish brown.
This is where we turned around. After studying it for awhile, we concluded that the lake is slowly filling up.
When heading back to the parking lot, it occurred to me that this could be a nice place to do a little plein air painting.
Stay tuned! I might do some painting here soon with my friend Krista who needs to do a few examples of plein air painting in order to qualify for a job. Like me she is a studio painter, but unlike me, she wants to expand into plein air. I have more experience at it than she does, so I can help her, we can hang out together, and maybe one day, I will actually improve my plein air skills in spite of my less than stellar attitude about it.
Whenever I have a show, no matter how many pieces sell, I bring home the rest and wonder why they didn’t sell. Then I think about the ones I’ve had the longest, pieces that I have improved on each time I show them again. How can I make these pieces better?
I did this scene as an 8×10 to test it out. It was the beginning of my phase of painting orange groves with hills and snow-covered mountains, which coincided with my beginning forays into plein air painting. This type of scene embodies the best parts of Tulare County—rural, citrus, foothills, snowy Sierra.
Tulare County’s Best, 8×10″
It was fun, but of the quality that caused my dearest and closest (and most honest) folks to ask if I was finished with it. So, I touched it up again, and it Is better. But it still hasn’t sold.
Tulare County’s Best, 8×10″
In spite of this little painting’s lack of success, I still love this scene. I painted it again, this time 24×24″. (Sometimes I actually do paint what I love instead of just what I think might sell.)
Tulare County’s Best II, 24×24″, NFS*
Now we’re cooking with gas! Brighter colors this time, because as I develop my skills and “voice” as a painter, I gain more freedom to exaggerate and embellish (but within reason, because I am still a leading citizen of Realville).
Three shows in good galleries (well, come on, I know this is Tulare County, so they are non-profit galleries rather than big city pushy money-hungry galleries) and it hasn’t found a home.
Think, think, think, AHA!
First, let’s try a little better living with technology, and tiptoe into the AHA. Using Photoshop Junior, I combined Tulare County’s Best II with a detail from a more recent painting of the same genre.
What do you think now? (almost said, “How do you like them apples?”)
Yeppers, Tulare County’s Best will get even better.
*NFS means Not For Sale, because it isn’t finished yet.
At The Four-Way, right next to the Chevron station, there is a classic red barn with an enormous Valley oak tree, quercus lobata. It’s just part of the landscape, and one day while I was getting gas, I realized that this barn could just tumble, or the excess pavement near the tree could prevent it from getting the water it requires and BOOM, gone-zo. So, I took a photo to paint from, realizing there would need to be some severe editing and a liberal application of artistic license.
I started painting it one morning when I was a bit short on time but eager to get rolling. A friend stopped by to visit and kept me company while I started. I felt pretty optimistic about the painting by the end of the session.
Then I looked at this photo and realized the barn’s proportions were completely whackadoodle. So, I erased the worst parts.
Then I drew them in correctly. (How/why did I skip this step initially?? Never mind about having a friend hanging out. . . I used to be able to talk and draw.)
Back on track. . .
I realized that the orange trees needed to be different shades of green from the oak, so I mixed new greens and fixed up that grove.
Then I started working on the tree.
There was too much sky, and it needed hills and mountains.
Those clumps of leaves seemed to take forever.
It was a good day painting, and when I finished, I sat across from it with my critical hat on (metaphorically speaking because I wasn’t actually wearing a hat), I made a list of about 10 things to correct or add.
Want to see the photo that I snapped while I was getting gas?
You can see that severe editing was required to turn it back into a real countrified scene. And you can probably see about 90 things that I can do to make it be a better painting.
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.
By “large”, I mean 18×36″ and 20×24″. By “iconic”, I mean these are familiar and much loved vistas of Tulare County.
I bet you can guess the subject of this 18×36″ painting.
Paintings start out so sloppy, but I am finally used to it and not worried when I start a new one.
This was too tall for me to reach the sky, so I flipped it upside down.
Sometimes I wonder why I even look at photos anymore when I paint this scene. Then I do something complicated such as trying to combine two different photos, and then realize that one was taken in morning light and one taken in the evening. This doesn’t work out well.
When beginning a new painting, shapes keep getting corrected and moved and resized. Eventually there is wet paint over the entire canvas, and anything I attempt just smears. When that happens, I move to another painting.
Lake Kaweah is VERY FULL right now. VERY FULL.
I enjoyed mixing the colors of the clouds and the distant mountains. They were fun to detail, but I know they aren’t good enough. Yet.
Although I am using a photograph, I might have to do some altering in order for the clouds to be believable. The sky needs another layer too. I wonder if the lake could use a houseboat or two or seven. Lake Kaweah with Moro Rock, Alta Peak and Castle Rocks in the distance is a very iconic scene in Tulare County. It wasn’t on my list to paint for the upcoming solo show until a friend showed me a beautiful photo she took on her way home from work in Three Rivers a week or two ago. She graciously offered to let me paint from it, and I started this painting the very next day.