For awhile I had a link in these emails of my daily blog post to take you to the site on the internet so you could see the photos. Now there is some tomfoolery happening with my blog, so I am not putting the link in until it gets sorted out. If you would like to see the pictures, go to jana botkin dot net (written this way to confound the evil robots who are messing things up.)

The mountains in this oil painting commission need to be accurate.

I thought I had it all figured out, and then I got confused.

Are you confused also? These photos are all a little bit different, possibly getting incrementally more accurate, but probably looking identical to you.

In the photos, sometimes it looks as if Sawtooth is close to Homer’s Nose, and other times it seems as if there is more distance. Sometimes Sawtooth looks shorter than others, with the point barely visible.

What is going on here??

I have been gathering reference photos from different viewpoints, at different times of day, for a few months (years, actually). The views change with the viewpoints. That’s should have been obvious. 

Instead, I focused on whether or not I could see the mountains through the smog or the clouds.

Up until now, it hasn’t mattered that I have been faking the mountains that I can’t recognize or name.

So, I looked at a photo from my friend’s balcony, a photo from the freeway, and a photo from the top of Badger Hill, and one from Rocky Hill.

Then I sketched each one so I could understand the differences.

Now I know the distances that need to be between the peaks to emulate the view that Mr. Customer wants, and because of the annotated photo, I should be able to make the complete and correct shapes.

This stretch of mountains is just a third of the painting on the upper reaches. I will need to do this on the other 2/3, and then I get to start deciphering the hills and the groves. Maybe I can make that part up. Maybe I will have to.

I thought this would be an easy job because of the familiarity of the subject. . . no such thing.