Sold Mineral King Oil Paintings

Mineral King oil paintings have been selling steadily this summer at the Silver City Store/Resort.

The popularity of subjects has changed a bit. The Honeymoon Cabin is this year’s favorite, the Crowley cabin/Farewell Gap (view from the bridge at the end of the road) is second, and only one Sawtooth painting has sold. All the other paintings are in the category of Everything Else, which includes back country, trails, streams, and general scenery of the area.

The most popular size remains 6×6″ (perhaps because I paint more of that size than any other) with the second most popular size 4×6″. The large paintings look good in the store, but most people just want a bargain.

There are a couple more on the list of solds, but I didn’t keep close enough track and can’t find the scans of those paintings. (There are drawbacks to living in 2 places, one of them without the internet, but I bravely soldier on.)

Maybe for next year I should just do 6×6″ Honeymoon Cabin oil paintings. Wait, that won’t work because the market for those may be saturated. But wait. . . are the customers one-time visitors, repeat guests, or cabin community members?

The business of art is full of by-guess-and-by-golly. There is so much more to being an artist than just painting. . . all the thinking and planning in the world is still just an intuitive guess.

Mineral King oil paintings oil paintings

Cleaned up Messes

My four little messes from last week have become paintings. This 4×6″ size is tricky to paint. I hold them in my left hand, often ending up wearing paint in addition to applying it, and always wishing for smaller and smaller brushes. They retail for $50 (plus 8% tax, welcome to California) each, and the place that sells them takes a bite out of the $50, so I have to be careful to not pour too many hours into them.

In other words, I have to “settle”. Two passes over the canvas is all they get, and rather than focus on precision, I focus on pleasing colors and contrast. That’s not natural to this Central California artist whose specialty is detail in pencil.

But, I bravely soldier on. . .

For the 2nd pass, I mix the colors more carefully and try to get them all mixed before beginning.

I hope these dry quickly; they should outside in the heat and the wind.

More on the rock was a good idea except for those troublesome grasses.

Maybe the wood stack is better because the sun is over there for a longer time.

4 little Mineral King oil paintings, drying on the wood stack. Farewell Gap, Vandever with the stream, Honeymoon Cabin, Juniper.

But wait! There’s more!

That juniper needs to be painted on an 8×8″ square canvas. I’ll enjoy painting it more when there is space to capture more detail.

Mineral King oil paintings oil paintings

Four Little Messes

Happy Birthday, Ashley!

It has been a few weeks since I oil painted. Little paintings are selling steadily at the Silver City Resort/Store 4 miles below Mineral King, and in this final push of summer before the season shuts down after Labor Day, it seems wise to load up their shelves.

How in the world do people complete a painting in only one pass over the canvas? I’ve done it, but right now it seems like a foreign language that I have never heard before.

It was easy to choose the subjects to paint, and goodness knows, I have hundreds of photos of the same scenes in Mineral King, all in different lights.

Here are four little messes. By “little”, I mean 4×6″. By “messes”, I mean OH NO HAVE I FORGOTTEN HOW TO PAINT??

Mineral King oil paintings oil paintings

Not Enough Paintings??

Each year, summer comes and Mineral King opens at the same time. This year I felt very prepared, having completed 30-40 paintings of Mineral King, many of which sold as I was working on them. Small paintings sell at the Silver City ~~Store~~ Resort, and that is my main place to sell during the summer.

In July, I decided that I still didn’t have enough. There were too many Sawtooths, not enough general subjects, and definitely not enough bears. Because of the difficulty of getting photos of bears, I don’t have much reference material. However, the one bear painting I did sold immediately, so I decided to paint from some of my other bear photos, even though they aren’t that good. After all, if I can draw horses that I can’t see, certainly I can paint bears that I can’t see.

All that was hanging in the painting workshop was the 10×10″ sold bridge and a retouched “Leaving Monarch”.

After a little self talk (Who cares if you don’t want to paint bears from photos that don’t offer enough detail? Would you rather wait tables somewhere? Be a nanny? Pack fruit? Come on, let’s move it, hubba hubba hubba!!), I began two 6×6″ bears, and prepared to do another painting of the famous view from the bridge of Farewell Gap with the Crowley Cabin.

Turning things sideways helps me see the shapes more accurately.

Then I slapped out the 6×6″ painting of the most photographed, painted, drawn and recognizable scene in Mineral King. Very few people notice that the tallest tree, the red fir on the left is no longer there. A shorter red fir is now in that position, but I have a collection of “old” photos that I don’t want to waste. So I paint it and people buy it. (Thank you, Buying People!)

Top to bottom, left to right: Bear IV, Mineral King XI, Leaving Monarch, Oak Grove Bridge XXIV, Bear III

(Lest you worry about my attitude, I actually enjoyed the painting session in spite of the rattling swamp cooler and excessive heat. It helped to listen to The Recappery, where the History Chicks gave a thorough account of an episode of “Anne With An E”. They are so much fun, and they bleep their cuss words.)

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Productive Procrastination

The oil painting commission of Homer’s Nose With the Oak Grove Bridge felt too hard. Was I low on sleep? (That was both my parents’ question and/or conclusion any time there was a problem both growing up and as an adult.) Distraction was present in the form of some cats, a friend or two stopping by, the heat, lots of unfinished projects. . . but the main problem might have been fear.

So, I listened to the song “Fear is a Liar” by Zach Williams on repeat for an hour or so, and then I started a new painting of the same bridge from the same angle.

When I don’t know how to do the next step on a project, I often begin a new project. This may be the first time I’ve started a second painting of the same subject, the very one that has me handcuffed.

This 10×0″ painting of the Oak Grove Bridge is serving as a warm-up for the larger version in the commissioned oil painting of Homer’s Nose with the Oak Grove Bridge.

During this time of unfocused indecision, all my Mineral King paintings were crated up, ready to go to Silver City for the Art: Inspired by Mineral King show. This gave me a sense (albeit a false one) of not having enough paintings to sell. On top of that ridiculousness, I began the magical thinking of “What If Everything Sells and Then I Have Nothing of Mineral King?”

My response to that was to begin another 6×6″ painting of Sawtooth. Here they are on the drying wall in their sloppy scribble stage, along with the completed river painting.

Yep. Good decision. When you can’t get your work finished, just begin more work.

Aren’t you glad you stopped by for this uplifting, realistic, encouraging piece of artistic wisdom?

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Art: Inspired By Mineral King

Farewell Gap, a pencil drawing, will be available as a framed original for $400 and in card sets.

After 7-8 months of painting toward a show about Mineral King and (almost) in Mineral King, it is tomorrow!

Is it considered shouting to use bold type? Or is that only for capital letters? I’ve always always always considered italics to be whispering, so maybe this paragraph will be more soothing to your ears.

Four artists with cabins in the Mineral King area will be showing and selling our work on the deck of the Silver City Store tomorrow, June 30, 10 AM until 3 PM.

The Silver City Store is 21 miles up the Mineral King Road. It is a long way there, a long and winding road, and it is well worth the effort it takes to get there. The store is at about 6700′ in elevation, and it is no longer called “The Store” but now is “The Silver City Resort”. The store itself has been remodeled into a new rustic elegant interior; the artists will be on the spacious outdoor deck.

Linda Hengst, Joan Keesey, John Keesey and I will be there. Linda paints in acrylic (or is it oil? Hard for me to tell the difference), Joan does tight realistic botanicals in watercolors, and John does whimsical playful watercolors of somewhat stylized scenery of the area. Linda’s work makes you say “Ahhhh”, Joan’s work makes you say, “Ooooh”, and John’s work makes you smile. My work? Um, let’s see. . . “How much for this one?”

I am taking 23 oil paintings (some of which I have shown you on this blog), 5 pencil drawings (all of which you have seen on this blog), Mineral King cards (old and new designs), a few reproductions of pencil drawings (also of Mineral King, duh) and some copies of my book The Cabins of Wilsonia. (The Cabins of Where? Yes, they have been requested.)

Let’s roll! See you tomorrow??

Art: Inspired byMineral King

Show and Sale

FOUR ARTISTS: Jana Botkin, Linda Hengst, Joan and John Keesey

SILVER CITY RESORT, 21 miles up the Mineral King Road

Saturday, June 30, 2018

10 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Honeymoon Cabin #33, 6×18″, $160 inc. tax. (I like this one so much that if I saw it in a gallery, I’d probably buy it.)

drawing Mineral King Mineral King oil paintings pencil drawing upcoming event

Mineral King Show Coming Soon

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANN!

June 30 will be here quickly. That is the date for the Mineral King art show that I will be participating in with 3 other artists at the Silver City Store.

Heat will be here quickly too, so I need to finish these oil paintings before it is time to turn on the swamp cooler and swat mosquitoes while painting.

Farewell Gap at the beginning of a painting of the end of summer.

These are my painting companions.

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In Which My Captions are Hijacked by a TC Native Speaker

In order to recover from the ordeal of my wrastling match (yep, that’s the way it is said in Tulare County – we are the same folks who say “warsh” for “wash”, and sometimes we say “crick” instead of “creek”) with the Kaweah Post Office oil painting, I enjoyed the yard a bit. By “enjoy”, I mean that I took a few photos and pulled a mountain of weeds.

Then it was time to get back at it, “it” being the easels. Been lollygagging around recently, so I am having to parent myself rather vigorously in order to finish my responsibilities. (“But I DON’T WANNA!”)

Here is a batch of Mineral King paintings in their ugly stages, but improving slightly.

Oops. Forgot to take the before photo of this one.

Now that’s a real unusual way to portray Sawtooth. Whatsa matter, Central California Artist? Are you getting tired of painting Sawtooth like regular folks?

Well, I’ll be! If it ain’t another Sawtooth painting!

You think this oil painting of Eagle Lake is a mess? You ought to see that sorry excuse of a trail!

This one’ll be real purdy when you get them wildflowers in it.

Ahem. Something seems to have taken over the captions of my photos today. Sounds like a Tulare County native speaker.

Shut up. Those are my people.

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More Easel Time

Remember the commissioned oil painting of Sawtooth? I do, really, I do. Please don’t worry, DV!

It looked like this after the first painting session.

Now the sky and upper half of the painting has another layer that is more dramatic, which means both the colors and contrast are stronger.

It was a rainy overcast day, and by the time I got to the Sawtooth part of the painting, the light was too poor to mix colors accurately. That wasn’t very important on the first layer, but it is increasingly important as the layers build.

So, I moved on to a Kaweah Post Office commission. SD asked me to paint another Kaweah Post Office IX for her. This one is number IXV. It should be XV, but I didn’t number one of my earlier Kaweah Post Office paintings. That happens a lot around here.

Kaweah Post Office IX was painted in 2013; its twin will be painted in 2018 with a few adjustments. It will be a fraternal twin, rather than an identical one.

Gotta start somewhere. . . Don’t worry, SD. I’ll paint until you are thrilled with the results!

As I was painting, I realized it would be helpful to see the one this was modeled after, because maybe this wasn’t the actual photo used for that one. Yea for a laptop.