A Full Day of Variety

What does an artist do all day? For this artist, every day is different. Yeah, it seems as if all I did all winter was paint, paint, paint. That’s different right now.

First, I walked with my neighbor (numb toes, but manageable for 2 miles), then I worked in my herb garden for about an hour.

The deer aren’t messing with these hollyhocks. Haha, deer.

I put together a bank deposit, and then had to make a phone call that ended up taking a full hour. It was a successful attempt to untangle a Word problem. Nope, not a crossword type word problem, the Microsoft type of problem.

This led to about 2.5 hours of proofreading.

Suddenly, the morning was over, and I had to paint a sign. Sometimes I do odd jobs like that.

Suddenly the afternoon was almost over and I hadn’t oil-painted and it was killer hot and the swamp cooler hadn’t been turned on. Yikes! I went into the studio for a bit to scan 2 new paintings in hopes that the swamp would have a chance to get rolling.

Classic Mineral King, 8×10″, $145
Classic Mineral King 2, 10×10″, $200

I had some iced tea (herbal, because caffeine is a bad choice in the afternoon), and then went to the easels. It was too hot to putter or just dink around*, so I dove in fully focused with a game plan. Mike Rowe kept me company interviewing Riley Gaines—no relation to Chip and Joanna as far as I know—about her new book**, Swimming Against the Current. (The link is for ThriftBooks rather than the big A.)

A few hours later, this was almost finished, and I was too.

All it needs is the edges painted. And a few houseboats—I forgot about that part. It also needs a title beyond the working title of “Rachel’s View”. Full Lake? Full Lake at Sunset? Lake Kaweah is Full? Still Waters? (corny. . . nope) Drowned Wildflower Seeds? (My great-uncle used to mourn the drowned wildflowers after the dam was built. . . I guess I have come by my love of wildflowers honestly, eh?)

*Sometimes I am not very focused, just moving from painting to painting, dabbing a bit here, perfecting a bit there.

**Imma wait for the liberry copy. It is because that’s what frugal people do.

Painting Mineral King in Mineral King

The view of a family cabin from the Mineral King bridge with Farewell Gap in the back and the stream in the front is the most popular scene that I paint of Mineral King. Sales have been brisk, and I am trying to get some inventory ready to go. So, instead of just hanging out in Mineral King, I did some work.

First, I started painting without the easel. It is annoying to set up, and I just wanted things to be easy.

Then I changed my mind. It seemed possible to set up both paintings side-by-side on the easel, which would make it worthwhile to hassle with the easel.

Yeppers, this works.

After awhile, the paintings felt too hard. I was looking at about 6 different photos, getting confused about which one to follow for which part on which canvas. Which which which. Time for a break. I walked to the bridge and sketched the various ripples, rocks, and willows, which all showed because the willows weren’t leafed out yet.

Now I have a map to follow whenever I paint this scene.

Finally, I set it up to dry so that I could get it home without incident.

I’d rather not work while in Mineral King, but if I cannot hike, I might as well be productive. And it is pretty handy to go see the real scene instead of relying on photographs.

Two Large Iconic Tulare County Scenes in One Day

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.

Stay tuned. . .

Painting Mineral King

In anticipation of a busy selling season this summer at the Silver City Store, I am painting like fury to have inventory. If I can get enough small pieces finished ahead of time, then I can return to painting larger Tulare County scenes for the solo show in the fall at CACHE in Exeter.

The most popular scene, assembly-line style for the base coats. Fret not: they will be detailed individually, and I won’t have all of them on display at the same time.

All of these are in various stages of completion, contributing to a sense of chaos and indecision as to how to proceed. It’s just part of the process when one chooses to be a factory, churning out many paintings of the same scenes.

These 6×6″ will be ready to go, once dried, scanned, and varnished.

Clockwise from upper left: White Chief, Alpenglow on Farewell Gap, View from the Bridge, Sawtooth.

This one was easier the second time I painted the scene. I’m a little reluctant to look at it side-by-side with the first version in case I decide this one is A. better or B. needs more work.

Finally, I started a 20×24″ painting of a scene shared with me by a drawing student. It looks like a weird abstract in the first pass over the canvas, but you trust me, yes? And you probably recognize the scene in the second photo here.

This one is going to be challenging but very satisfying. I messed with the photo to make it look more like we want to remember the scene rather than just accepting what the camera says. It really is a classic Tulare County vista.

First Mineral King Stay of 2024

On the drive up the hill, I was just astonished by the abundance of yellow flowers, particularly bush poppies, covering the areas that burned in 2021. There were also blazing stars, common madia, flannel bush, and monkey flowers, all yellow. There were some other colors too, but yellow dominated.

This is actually looking back downhill.

I have been working on a painting of a scene, incorporating every cabin below Timber Gap and Empire’s outcropping, in spite of there being no actual place to see everything at once. So, this was a good opportunity to really observe each cabin before all the foliage had leafed out.

I spent several sessions standing in various locations, sketching how each cabin might look in relation to its neighbors.

But I bet you didn’t come to this post to see me go on about my work.

View looking uphill from Lookout Point. The tip of Sawtooth is barely visible, but you can see that Sawtooth is still snow-covered.
Farewell Gap is also very snow-covered.
This is the stream by the Honeymoon Cabin.
The Nature Trail has some snow drifts.
The Spring Creek bridge is not in, but someone went snooping around and found a metal plank and placed it below where the stream divides.

The Mineral King road is still under construction with a fluctuating schedule of closures. As soon as I think I know when it will be open and when it will be closed, the schedule gets rearranged. There were many pieces of equipment parked along the shoulders (such as “shoulders” exist on this road), many piles of dirt, and many places of dropping down to gravel where sections will be repaved. But compared to last summer, it isn’t scary.

Let the summer begin!

Eight on the Easels

Eight WHAT on the easels?

So glad you asked! Eight oil paintings of Mineral King are on my easels. Sometimes they are on a table, sometimes they are in my hands while I paint.

After putting a base coat on the canvases to bury the white, I painted skies on all eight.

four 6×6″ paintings
one 10×10″, one 8×10″ painting

Three are the same scene, the most popular Mineral King subject of the Crowley family cabin in front of Farewell Gap. And now that the skies are in and I am seeing it on the computer, it is apparent that West Florence peak (the left side of Farewell Gap) on the 10×10″ painting isn’t high enough. That will be an easy fix.

Are you counting and recounting and wondering if I have forgotten basic arithmetic?

Here are the other two. I started them awhile ago but set them aside to paint some redwood trees.

These have new skies now, but I didn’t rephotograph them

Here are the redwood trees, in case you have forgotten. Or maybe you needed a reminder that Sequoia gigantea is the same as redwood. (We also call them The Big Trees around here in basic low-brow Tulare County type language.)

I wanted to show off my Sequoia gigantea paintings. Just a little. It might be called “marketing” or “advertising”, possibly even “bragging”.

Mineral King in September

Yes, I know it is still April. Before I left for Texas, I painted this view of the Mineral King valley as it looks from the Timber Gap trail in September. The first layer was done a few days earlier, but I didn’t take any pictures.

Sky first.
Clouds second
Upper edges of peaks to get the shapes right.
Moving forward.
Skipped photographing a few steps because I didn’t want you to fall asleep.

I left it wet on the easel to put branches and greenery on the tree and sign it after I get back home.

Tomorrow: Things I Learned in April.

Commission, Cat, Correction, Challenge

Someone, let’s call her JL, bought this 8×8″ painting, “Hiking Mineral King” at Kaweah Arts as a Christmas gift for her son.

He loved it and requested a second 8×8″ painting to go with it for his birthday. JL isn’t familiar with Mineral King, so I made a couple of suggestions. The son chose Sawtooth, based on this painting that I sent to JL.

I must have made that one up because there is no such photo. As a result, I spent a big part of a day making it up again, looking at a handful of photos. (The photo on the right does NOT have a waterfall—that is a reflection.)

After this dries, I will work on more details, polishing and finessing. I need to hustle my bustle, because there is a definite delivery date.

Tucker stayed with me for most of the day as I painted.

On the same day, I spent a fair amount of time studying this painting.

Can you tell any difference now? I can, muy poquito.

This painting reminds me of one I did several years ago, one that was definitely a large challenge for me in 2015 (might still be). I just kept guessing, layering, correcting, and slowly improving it. It is now one of my paintings that I am most proud of.

Mineral King—Painting the Details

If you receive this in your email and want to see the photos, click on the title.

When we last saw this most popular Mineral King scene on the easels, it looked like this.

A little more work brought it to this stage.

That big juniper tree needed attention, as did Vandever (the peak).

Next, I worked on the shrubs and the stream bank.

It was time to make sense of the stream, starting the farthest away where it curves to the left. That’s not technically correct, because it is flowing toward us, coming from the left. You know what I mean, yes?

Now, let’s back up and see the whole picture again.

Looking good, except the stream was definitely lacking detail.

Next time I show you this painting, I will back up so you can see the whole thing. Then I will probably start adding more detail to the shrubs. Details are my favorite part, but you knew that already.