Still Painting as if I Have a Show Coming

Yesterday I told you to come back if you wanted to see what else I am working on. Glad you could make it. I hope you aren’t too bored with my repetitious subject matter.

But first, LOOK! It rained early in the morning, and we took a short walk here in Three Rivers to see shades of blue and hills that we hadn’t seen in weeks.

Back to work: this is large for me, 18×36″. Because it is my current favorite subject to see, experience, and paint, I decided to do this for my own dining room. Then, I got asked to do a solo show at Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery, and realized that the piece belongs in the show. 

This is at the stage where it feels too hard and as if I will NEVER finish.

However, I am an experienced oil painter and I know better than to listen to these feelings. Phooey to you, Pheelings.

There. Guess I told them.

Despite my sense of apprehension, this is coming along nicely, with more color and texture in the hills, a bit more detailing on the foreground tree, another layer on the distant groves, closer orchard and ground.

Because I plan to put this in the gallery, and because all pieces in the show must be for sale, I have two choices when it is finished: paint it again for myself when it sells, or price it at $10,000 so it won’t sell. Since I am a professional, not a hobbyist, I will simply price it in the normal fashion, based on size. I want to raise the price, because it will hurt a bit less to part with it if there are more pieces of green paper with dead presidents’ faces on them in exchange for the painting, but I will keep it at the standard price for this size BECAUSE:

I use pencil, OIL PAINT, and murals to make art people can understand, of places and things they love, for PRICES THAT WON’T SCARE THEM!

Excuse me for shouting. Sometimes I get a little overly enthusiastic about that tag line.

Soothing Subject as a Distraction

As I write this post, the Paradise Fire (part of the KNP Complex fire) has been obscuring all views at home and giving me a passive smoker’s cough. It is threatening our cabin in Mineral King (mandatory evacuation) and possibly our home in Three Rivers (voluntary evacuation).

How is a Central California artist to cope?

By painting her favorite type of scenery.*

This was how it looked when I last showed you.

See how the colors look now? This is before I began painting, and it has a funny tint due to the smoky orange light outside.

To help me focus, I flipped it upside down, flipped the photo upside down on the laptop screen, enlarged it tremendously, and proceeded to draw with my paintbrush. The goal was to be as accurate as possible, working back to front in the scenery, and matching the mountains to the best of my ability while squishing the scene onto a canvas of different proportions than the photos. (Trickinology, remember?)

When this is dry, I will add the windmachines, oranges, signature, and edges.

Then maybe I’ll go househunting in Lemon Cove where they don’t have wildfires.

Nope. I am NEVER moving again.

Yeah, I know, “never say never”. Been here almost 23 years and I truly do not want to lose this place or to move.

*along with answering texts, phone calls, and emails from many concerned friends, listening to Mike Rowe’s podcasts, continuing to pray in less than coherent phrases throughout the day, and hanging out with cats.