Repainting Mineral King, Day Two

This is what greeted me at 8:30 a.m. on Day Two of repainting the Mineral King mural in Exeter.

The truck’s cab is at Mosquito Lakes; the bed is at Mineral Lakes. That’s one big truck.

See the little green car in the background? This truck could eat my car for breakfast. 

I stood on this stool to reach the upper trees. It was a little dicey, but I was very very careful. A woman driving a Tulare County Dial-A-Ride van came through and admonished me kindly, “Don’t get hurt!” I thought about it later – she drives all over the county giving rides to strangers and yet is concerned for my safety?

Larry came by and said, “I knew you would move up in the world”. I told him that it was a normal thing for people to get high when they are faced with difficult situations.

It is so very hot on this wall – continual and relentless heat and sunshine. Good thing it isn’t really hot out yet, because in the high 60s it feels like 100 degrees standing there. Each time I stepped back, I thought something like, “Holy cow, I have seriously underbid this job; what was I thinking? Was I thinking at all? How am I going to do this??”

During one of these sessions, I leaned against my other mural’s cold, cold wall and thought about things. Then I decided the closer slopes needed to be recoated with something less blue. I also decided to use a large brush and just slam a base coat of green on the forested area to be detailed later.

Alrighty, then. Now we’re getting somewhere.

At the end of Day Two (no, I am not going to use the tired cliche here), this is what we have. Perhaps on Day Three I will beep beep back up the truck and then stand on the ground to finish detailing that hill in the foreground.

I forgot how very noisy it is in a city. My mural seems to be located at Delivery Central – Challenge Butter, Farmer Bros. Coffee, some ice machine company, uniform delivery, Pepsi delivery – diesel engines all. Then there is the amplified telephone ring from the fire station, the noon whistle which almost knocks me off my ladder, and people’s conversations in the nearby parking lot. (Does everyone still overuse the word “like”? – sounds that way to me, just painting and eavesdropping and wondering. . .)

 

 

Repainting Mineral King, Day One

On Wednesday, I began repainting the big Mineral King mural in Exeter. Gave me something to do while I waited for Samson to get civilized at the veterinarian in Exeter.

So much has changed since I painted this mural in 2009. The attorney who told me to use his office as a staging place died last month. The photographer who gave me a key to his studio has retired. The coffee shop on the other side of the mural where I got water for my brushes has closed. The mural has turned blue. I used to do this blog on a desktop and now I’m on my second laptop. I used to have a cell phone.

But the people were just as entertaining as the last time. 

  1. A large woman said as she labored past, “I couldn’t stand to work around all those food smells.” (Food? I just smell paint.)
  2. Larry said, “How do you keep from getting paint on your pants?” (He was joking.)
  3. Dick said, “You gonna finally put color in those snapshots?” (He was joking too.)
  4. A man talked at me for about 15 minutes (felt like 45) about music; I think that’s what he was talking about, but it was the musical equivalent of Artspeak and I have no earthly idea what he was trying to communicate. Very friendly and talkative. I just kept painting and occasionally responding with something that probably sounded as intelligent to him as he sounded to me.
  5. Another man told me he couldn’t wait to get back into the mountains to backpack because he was going to go from Wolverton to Mineral King, and it would take him about 8 hours. (Really? I did it the opposite direction a number of years ago, and it took about 6 days.)
  6. A man asked, “How long will it take you to pull the blue out?” (“Pull it out”? I’m covering it up.)

And there were plenty of really nice complimentary people who wanted to know what I was doing. I explained about the color fading, and not one had noticed that all the trees had turned blue. “Oh! Now I see what you mean!”

This is what I saw at 8:30 a.m.

Blue trees and ground, flowers completely faded away.

My paints were locked up at the Exeter Chamber of Commerce until they opened at 9, so I messed around a little with some old paints.

Hard to fathom that the ground was once tan instead of shades of lavender, gray and blue.

My first task was to open boxes of paint and do some pouring into smaller jars and then mix new greens. The paint company no longer recommends the yellow I was using for outdoor murals, so I don’t want to use any of my other greens containing Cadmium Yellow or Azo Yellow. Now it is Bismuth yellow, which almost looks chartreuse to me. It’s in the bucket; the old yellow is in the smaller jar.

Got 2 greens mixed and just dove in. Had to do something while I waited for the cat.

This is how it looked when I stopped for a quick snack that passed for lunch. Any excuse to sit in the shade – the sun is relentless on this south-facing mural.

Kept thinking about Samson, feeling the sun, wondering why the mural team didn’t hire someone who knows what she is doing, and finally set the goal of finishing that ground hill section in dirt colors before calling the vet. (I borrowed Trail Guy’s Jitterbug, in case you were wondering if I had caved in and gotten a cell phone yet.)

And now for the most overused cliche in English these days – At The End of the Day, the mural looked like this.

Tomorrow I will work on detailing that ground section, and then see if I can reach the lower section of trees from the bed of the borrowed truck, which I will drive over from Mosquito Lake.

Hunh? The Central California artist may have gotten too much sun today.

(Samson is home, and very very happy to be here. He tried to bite his way out of the box in the car. Thank you for asking.)

 

A Field Trip to Sequoia

Today I begin refreshing the largest Mineral King mural in Exeter (North of Pine, West side of E Street, South side of Capella Coffee)

Tomorrow I’ll show you today’s work on the mural.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy some photos of a recent half-day field trip. Trail Guy and I went to Giant Forest in Sequoia National Park for a little cross-country skiing. It was the day after a cold storm, and it was clear, cold, and beautiful.

 

View out the window of the dining room at Wuksachi Lodge
View out the window of dining room in Wuksachi Lodge
Front porch of Wuksachi Lodge, Sequoia National Park

 

Repainting Mineral King and Prudence

Happy Birthday, Gordon!!

The big Mineral King mural in Exeter has faded.

Yellow fades the quickest, so gray becomes purple, tan becomes gray which then fades to lavender, and green becomes blue.

The mural colors were like this when I finished it after 52 days of painting in 2009.

Now the colors look this way:

It is time to refresh the greens and grays, and when it stops raining, I will do that. The sky and the insets are fine, as are the farthest snow-covered peaks. (Maybe – ever heard of “purple mountain majesty”?)

Meanwhile, I am preparing to repaint Mineral King by painting Mineral King in oil. Painting a mural is very attention-getting, and the process will bring attention to Mineral King. It is prudent to have paintings ready for eager customers; if I had been born in the 1600s, perhaps my name would have been Prudence.

It was prudence that caused me to photograph these through the window rather than going into the painting workshop, which doubles as the Bengal-beast’s safe place. I didn’t want to awaken the sleeping Samson by going into his territory.

Little Bitty Ore Buckets

Say what? Ore buckets? Little bitty ore buckets? 

Remember the first Mineral King Room (in Three Rivers History Museum) mural was of a tram tower below the Empire Mine in Mineral King and only made sense if someone was standing there ‘splaining it?

Now, there are visual aids. In addition to the real ore bucket resting alongside the mural, there are to-scale versions actually on the mural, hanging from the cable.

These are utter perfection, the final touch that makes this mural come alive! Thank you, Nancy B. of the Three Rivers Historical Museum!!

And here are the other 2 murals, in case they were feeling left out.

 

Because Jimmy Asked

Who is Jimmy? A friend of mine.

What did he ask? Something about William O. Clough and his memorial and Franklin Lake’s dam and the dams built on lakes by the Mt. Whitney Power Co. It wasn’t a specific question, more of a request for more information. He asked me, because Google sent him to my website (probably among several hundred thousand others).

Bill Clough was a colorful guy (an early Trail Guy, perhaps?) who had the job of closing the dams for the winter that Mt. Whitney Power Co. built on four lakes out of Mineral King. Or maybe he opened them. . . I don’t know how this works. (Yes, it still works, but might involve helicopters for transportation these days.)

One fall, Bill didn’t return. The following spring or summer, or maybe even a later spring or summer, someone found his boots near the little cabin he built about halfway between Mineral King and Franklin Lake. Did he live in the cabin? In the summer? 

So many questions. . . wish the guy had kept a journal, or a blog or something else helpful.

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The corner of his cabin still exists.
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This giant red fir near his cabin ruins has a memorial plaque. Placed by whom? When?
Memorial plaque for Bill Clough
What does it say?
Bill Clough's plaque
Look how high up it is – it must have been placed many moons ago, when that place on the tree was reachable. (Hi Deendie!)

So many questions, so few answers. Here is a list of what I know:

  1. The dams out of Mineral King are on Franklin Lake (the lower larger lake), Crystal Lake (upper or lower? It’s been too long since I was there), upper Monarch Lake, and Eagle Lake (only one of those in Mineral King).
  2. The cave out of the South Fork (of the Kaweah River) Campground of Sequoia National Park is called “Clough’s Cave”. The cave has a gate, so forget about it.
  3. You can read more about Bill in Mineral King: The Story of Beulah by Louise A. Jackson 
  4. My second mural in Exeter called “Men + Mules + Water = Power” is of Franklin Lake as it looks now, with insets of related historic scenes.

Hope that helps, Jimmy, and thank you for asking so that I could put a Mineral King post up on a Friday in the middle of winter when the ideas are a little sparse.

NEWS FLASH: Bill Clough’s great-grand-niece just left my studio. Uncle Bill closed the dams for the winter. He closed the Franklin dam one fall, then returned to his cabin area, sat down and died. The following spring, my friend’s granddad went looking for him and found his boots and his beard. Uncle Bill was “eccentric”, had a very long beard, and sometimes he preached. (To whom? What? Always more questions around here. . .)

Save

Save

Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done

That’s a non-Google kind of title, but the real title is boring. “Mineral King Mural #3 is Finished in Three Rivers Museum”.

First, a little context. Here is mural #1 as it appears in the Mineral King Room of the Three Rivers Museum (Redundant, I know, but I have to say all those words so this post can be found on the World Wide Web.)

Mineral King mural in Three Rivers Museum of Empire Mt. mining area.
Mineral King mural  of Empire Mt. mining area in Three Rivers Museum . No miniature ore buckets hanging from the little cable yet. . . will they get made in time for the January 22 opening party of the room?? As always, more will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

And to our left in the Mineral King Room:

2 more murals in the Mineral King Room of the Three Rivers Museum
2 more murals in the Mineral King Room of the Three Rivers Museum

The cabinet in front of mural #3 will be sitting lower once it is removed from the dollies. Yes, those rolling platforms are called “dollies” – anyone know why?? The other sort that guys with their names on a patch on their shirts use to push around boxes of things are called “hand trucks”. (One never knows what sort of helpful tidbit one might pick up on this blog.)

And now for a little glimpse into what sort of fiddling and polishing happens at the end of a mural job – here is how the left side looked last week:

Left end of mural #3 before the final details.
Left end of mural #3 before the final details.
Left end of mural #3 after touching up a few details
Left end of mural #3 after touching up a few details

Louise said that the snow patch on the far end looked like white paint. I agreed, and saw that it had the wrong angle on the bottom. Then I added a spot of rocks in the center. She also said that the trees were too sparse, and of course she was right there too. 

These are minor details, but those who know, KNOW. Louise KNOWS. I fully trust her judgement, particularly about Mineral King. She has been a tremendous help to me on every Mineral King mural I have ever painted, and I LOVE working with her on any project. (Remember the book Trail of Promises this year? It came out in July, and is available here and on Amazon.)

No blue tape! Stick a fork in me; I'm done!
No more blue tape. . . Stick a fork in me; I’m done!

3rd Mineral King Mural, Day #3

The third Mineral King Mural in the Mineral King Room of the Three Rivers History Museum is almost finished. I estimated 3-4 painting days, and that’s about right.

First I worked on the mountains on the upper right. They were still rough, but it wasn’t apparent until I had detailed the other mountains. The contrast was strong between finished and unfinished mountains, but I didn’t take a close-up photo because I was DETERMINED to finish that day. (In spite of being a conscientious blogger, I do try to live in the moment rather than live to document life.)

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Now the upper mountains are tighter, and it shows the unfinished forested areas and everything else below the upper ridge.
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Can you see the improvement now? Louise helped me decipher the miniature details of the actual Mineral King valley, because that is the most important part.
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I added detail to the foreground – texture, rather than specific rocks.
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There might be no difference here, except that I remembered to move the photo taped to the mural.

I added details to the mountains to the left of the valley, detailed the foreground a bit more, added a foreground tree on the left and one on the right, added texture, snow, contrast, details, details, details. The pencil artist in me wants to take this thing to the nth degree.

Couldn’t stand it – I was compelled to remove the tape to get a cleaner view.
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This is how it looked at the end of the day. I left the photos up so that visitors to the incomplete Mineral King Room can see that it is real, not just a figment of some demented artist’s over-active imagination.

Here is the list of what remains to be done on day 4, which hardly counts as a painting day:

  1. Review all the details and the accuracy with Louise Jackson, author of Trail of Promises, dear friend, coordinator of the Mineral King Room and all-around Mineral King expert.
  2. Remove blue tape.
  3. Wash off blue chalk.
  4. Touch up wall paint where the mural paint bled under the tape.
  5. SIGN IT!!
  6. Ride off into the sunset.
This is how it looked when I stepped outside after painting 7-1/2 hours without stopping.
This is how it looked when I stepped outside after painting 7-1/2 hours without stopping.

Third Mineral King Mural in Three Rivers Museum

“Third Mineral King Mural in Three Rivers Museum” does not sound like a colorful, clever or creative title, but that’s the truth of the matter.

This is mural #1 in the Mineral King Room of the museum.

Tram tower for ore buckets from Empire mines in Mineral King
Mural of tram tower for ore buckets from Empire mines in Mineral King

Here is mural #2.

Sawtooth mural through window of Mineral King cabin facade.
Sawtooth mural through window of Mineral King cabin facade.

Finally, here is what you have been waiting for and wondering about: Mural #3!

Step one: determine where it belongs and tape off the edges.
Step one: determine where it belongs and tape off the edges.
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Step two: draw it. Actually, draw, erase, draw, erase, draw, erase, draw.
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Step three: start painting with whatever is farthest away.
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Step four: keep painting. Paint what matters the most, sort of working from farthest to closest. Get those peaks right so that everything else will line up underneath.
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Step five: block out giant patches so there is a sense of progress after all the little fiddly things make me feel as if I’m not getting anywhere.
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Step six: recoat the sky, retouch the tops of the peaks, reorganize the photos so it looks as if I am in control.

I think this will be a three day mural. The size is 9 feet by 2 feet. (Bet you can guess which dimension goes with which number. . .)

Third Mineral King Mural in Three Rivers Museum Day 2

Day #2 on the third Mineral King mural in the Mineral King Room of the Three Rivers Museum might be easier to paint than to spell out.

I began on the left, working down and forward in space. 

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Then, I realized that the farthest mountains were quite unfinished. This meant starting at the top (farthest distance) and painting down.

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Sort of. Maybe it would be good to add some more detail in the middle ground. Or a few trees up close.

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Or fill up all that white space on the far right. I think it is all forested over there.

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What do you mean by “It’s time to close”??? I’m not done, and I thought this was going to be quick and easy.

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One of the best ways I know to stay self-employed as a full time artist in Tulare County is to never lose my optimism.

To be continued. . .