What a weird sounding title. Never mind. Have a look at the progress on the Kaweah Post Office oil painting for Chuck.
First I drew it on the canvas.
Then, I put the first layer of paint down.
Don’t be scared, Chuck! They all start out this rough. It is a long layering process, and I’ll keep you posted weekly on the blog.
We interrupt our normal broadcast schedule to bring you a Kaweah Post Office fundraising update! (music, graphics, running line across the bottom of your screen? Nope, “We” is just me.)
My husband just retrieved today’s mail, and included was a check for $1500 to help pay for the rebuilding of the Kaweah Post Office!
Fifteen hundred dollars.
I am not making this up! What a crazy-generous friend we have!
The Kaweah Post Office is one of our only landmark structures in Three Rivers. I am working to help meet the insurance deductible to rebuild it because a big limb from a valley oak tree smashed the roof. (We are quite rural – perhaps a bear was in the tree eating acorns and caused the limb to break . . . I wasn’t there, but it could have happened that way!)
There is an auction on eBay to sell my painting of the Post Office; I will split the proceeds with them. (I gotta earn something here, dear readers – selling art is how I make my living!) It ends tomorrow, Friday, October 9, at noon. See it by clicking this link.
A nice man named Chuck told me he wants to participate with $200, but he just doesn’t shop on eBay. No worries, Chuck. I understand those types of boundaries, because I don’t play on Facebook.
So, I offered to repaint it for him for $100 and give $100 to the Post Office (that size normally sells for $150.)
Chuck upped his donation to $150 to the Post Office, so I got busy immediately. Here is how it looked after the first session on the canvas.
Normally, I don’t draw the image in pencil first. Instead, I block it out with my paint brush and correct the proportions with each successive layer of paint.
Because I will show Chuck a photo of the progress once a week on this blog, I wanted it to look better at each stage than paintings usually do. If he saw my normal sloppy way of beginning, he might get scared and withdraw his offer!
Thank you, Chuck (and don’t be scared!)
I am perpetually fed up with artists getting asked to donate to good causes. In May of 2014, I posted “An Artist Bloviates about Donations” on LinkedIn. My hope was to encourage fund raisers to find other methods besides asking those who are often at the bottom rungs of the financial ladder.
Under the list of “Reasons to Donate”, #1 was “An artist loves the cause and wants to help.” I currently have a cause I love and want to help.
Tulare County, where I live, is poor, rural, and in Central California. It is far from Los Angeles, San Francisco or the Silicon Valley. We are not rich either in money nor in landmarks.
One of our favorite historic structures is the Kaweah Post Office, a tiny wooden structure just outside of Three Rivers. It is 125 years old and still in operation!
Because we are also not currently rich in rainfall, many of our trees are very stressed. A giant oak above our little Kaweah Post Office lost a limb which smashed the roof and porch of the landmark we love.
The building is publicly appreciated, but privately owned. There is insurance, but it comes with a large deductible.
So, I am auctioning the above oil painting on eBay. In keeping with my principles about artists not giving away their work, I will donate half of the proceeds toward the restoration of the Kaweah Post Office.
A few notes:
1. Kaweah is the name of the rivers of Three Rivers. (South, Middle and North Forks of the Kaweah make up the three. . . never mind about the Marble and East forks – our forebears had to draw the line somewhere!)
2. It is pronounced “Kuh – WEE – uh” (not to be confused with “The River Kwai”)
3. The auction listing is “Original Oil Painting of Kaweah Post Office”.
4. The painting is 10×10″ on wrapped canvas, ready to hang.
5. The auction went live at 12:02 on September 29 and remains up for 10 days.
Now, let’s see how this bloviating artist’s version of raising money turns out!
These are some of the paintings on the easel and drying on the walls around the painting studio/workshop. I did them for the Studio Tour. After spending an entire year just drawing the cabins of Wilsonia, it was time to paint again.
Always gotta have citrus paintings – what else would you expect from a California artist? These are each 6×6, a very popular size in kitchen art.
These pomegranates are 4×4″. Like the shoes? Ugly as sin, but oh so very comfortable. I thought about cropping them out of this photo, but got lazy. This palette served as a convenient tray for transporting these little wet paintings. The weird circle behind the painting on the upper right is an old color wheel. The palette is a gift from someone whose mother used to paint. Most of my supplies are gifts from people whose mothers and mothers-in-law used to paint.
The yarn in the photo is lavender and blue. I have been on a roll for a couple of years just loving the combination of teal and brown, so that’s what I am making the yarn in the painting. The photo is showing me the twist pattern, the size of the strands, and the way the light and shadow fall. This is called “using a photo for reference”, because out there in ArtWorld, working from photos is met with a lot of contempt.
The Kaweah River is on my list of Oil Painting Subjects To Always Have On Hand. I’ve painted this scene before. This time it is 10×10″ square, and the colors are a bit juiced up, although it is hard to tell when looking at a photo of a photo.
Ditto the Kaweah Post Office. This is the first time I’ve included the monument marker. Painting it on a square canvas got my eye confused, and the proportions were whacky at this stage. I fixed it later.
Careful! The paint is wet on these! The piece of paper is how I keep track of where I am on which painting. I could just look around the room and see, but a list makes me feel more productive and efficient. Never mind that it might be a waste of time to make the list and to keep it current. I’m 53 and I can do what I want. Wait a minute – am I 54? I can’t remember!
The top and bottom paintings sold at the Studio Tour. Time to paint another Mineral King!
One of the most popular subjects for painting, drawing and photography in Three Rivers is the tiny Kaweah Post Office about 3 miles up North Fork Drive.
I’ve drawn it more times than I can remember and painted it 10 times. The reason I remember how many paintings is because I have called them Kaweah Post Office I, Kaweah Post Office II, Kaweah Post Office III, Kaweah Post Office IV. . . et cetera. Clever, no?
Here is #10, AKA Kaweah Post Office X in 2 stages. You may have to attend the Studio Tour this coming weekend to see it finished.
In order to keep each painting a little different, I paint it different sizes, from different angles, at different times of the year, and with different details. Sometimes I layer it (called “glazing” in Artspeak) and sometimes I try for alla prima (which means to finish all in one session).
This one is 10×10″, so it is slightly stretched out, and it will contain the historical marker, a new thing for me when painting. I thought the rocks looked fun – all those different grays to mix! Don’t know yet if they are fun, because I haven’t gotten to them at the time of this posting.
Remember I was struggling with finding the oomph to paint this? Once I got to the finishing details, I wanted to paint and paint and paint some more. I finally stopped so the nice lady with my favorite name in New Jersey could get her painting.
Elizabeth looked through my photos and chose this view for her commissioned oil painting. It shows the fence and gate behind the Kaweah Post Office up the North Fork of the Kaweah River in Three Rivers. (sorry for being so wordy – Mr. Google likes that.)
I got serious about working on this commissioned oil painting of the Kaweah Post Office in Three Rivers for a nice (and hopefully patient) lady from New Jersey.
Now, this is more like it. layers, details, contrast, texture. It needs to dry so I can paint the words on the signs – KAWEAH, POST OFFICE. The year established and the zip code are too small. The other words are sort of too small too, but I’ve done it before and I can do it again. I’ll probably end up tightening up other parts of the painting too. That’s usually how it goes.
So, I’ll just lift it off the easel, paint the edges, hang it up by the window, and then wipe the paint off my forearms. I always get paint on my forearms when I paint the edges of the canvas.
OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD! Would you just look at that!?!!
The wire is on the wrong side. The title on the back will be upside down too. I’ve only done this about 800 times so far.
I might need some time off soon.
Dabbling, thinking it might be good to finish this before it gets hot again when I’d rather be in the drawing studio with its A/C unit instead of in the painting studio with its swamp cooler. Dabbling, deciding, doodling. . .
Has anything even changed from yesterday?
Get going – drink some coffee or eat some chocolate!
Here’s the problem: I’ve been concentrating so hard and long on the upcoming book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, just drawing like a pencil machine, that I’ve gotten nervous about my painting abilities.
Wow. That created a sense of urgency. Stay tuned. . . more will be revealed.
Commissions are good! They mean I get to paint something that has a definite buyer. They are the opposite of speculation painting.
Contractors build “spec houses”. It means they build a house like the Field of Dreams philosophy, in anticipation of a buyer. (“Spec” is short for speculation, not specifications.)
Very few artists admit to “spec paintings”. However, isn’t that what we are doing when we paint what we want and then schlep it around to various web sites, galleries, shows and shops?
This new painting of the Kaweah Post Office will only be schlepped to the post office to be mailed to a really nice lady from New Jersey.
An oil painting begins its life in a rough manner.
When folks in Tulare County, particularly Three Rivers, have guests, we love to show them our sweet little Post Office up North Fork Drive. It is possibly the smallest operating P.O. in the United States, but that factoid depends on whom is being asked.
Anyhoo, we are proud of our cool little Post Office, even though it is technically in Kaweah and not in Three Rivers.
And thank you for being polite about how sloppy my painting looks when it is young.