A Tree Grows in Three Rivers

A Tree Grows in Three Rivers? Hokey, I know, and I can’t even remember what A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was about.

This is a commissioned mural inside of a home 2 doors away from me. It recently sold and will become yet another vacation rental in a town and neighborhood that is jammed full of such units. But that is a topic for another day, and probably another forum.

Working indoors is a pleasure – climate control, flat surface to stand on, consistent lighting, tunes or an audio book on my old laptop (why didn’t Apple include a CD slot in their new laptops?? – I get SO TIRED of “upgrades”, but again, a topic for another forum.)

This is what I found when I unlocked the door on Monday a.m. (a week ago). The carpet will be replaced, so no tarp was necessary. Weird.
This is outside the house and will have a human sized chess board, which I might be painting next.
I procrastinated a bit before beginning. Giant blank walls are intimidating.
I measured the height of the ceiling, because inquiring minds need to know. 14′. I climbed up the extension ladder and dropped a vertical so I could begin building the oak tree around it. It is the same method I use when drawing trees with pencil on paper (not with blue chalk – just a light pencil line).
The extension ladder was a bit cumbersome, so I went home for my own ladders.
After a bit of staring and thinking, I gave myself some more blue chalk guidelines.
A normal way to paint a mural is from the top down, but trees grow in the opposite direction.
There never is the perfect photo of the perfect tree, so I used all my oak tree photos to remind myself of the bark texture and the branching patterns. It is slow, thinky work.
This was a stroke of brilliance!
The raised hearth is helpful in boosting short ladders.

At the end of day one, this is what 

Gekkos in Three Rivers, Finished?

Is my mural, “Gekkos in Three Rivers” finished? A job isn’t finished until I hear from the customer that she is happy. As of the writing of this blog post, I haven’t heard.

The gekko on the left was the next one to be painted. These are the colors I chose. You can see the striking difference from the colored pencil version to the painted one – colored pencils make such wimpy-looking art! (unless you bear down with a zillion layers. . .)

I finished the remaining one – my current favorite color combination of blue with brown (a teal sort of blue with a pinkish grayish brown is really my favorite, but let’s not quibble here).

This is all 3 pairs. I studied them from a distance and then touched up this, that and the other thing. . . a little wider tail here, a few more spots there, painted “fingernails” in a few places, a wider body. . . 

And here you can see them all together.

What a lovely place to work this has been. . . happy sigh of gratefulness for nice weather and a really full river.

Let’s step back and see it in on the gazebo. Don’t you just want to hang out here?

And finally, as it appears from the road. 

It sort of looks like a (wobbly) banner. You can see there is something on it, but don’t know what it might be. Lots of colors, but which ones? Hmmm, maybe it will make people drive more slowly on North Fork.

 

Gekkos in Three Rivers

My decision is made: gekko is correct.

Here is how the first set of transferred and redrawn gekkos looked on Day Two in the shade. Still hard to see, but not invisible. 

After applying more blue chalk to the back side of the tissue pattern, I transferred 2 more sets of gekkos to the board, and then went over the top of the chalk with a pencil. (I’m always most comfortable with a pencil in my hand.)

The surface of the board is very rough, so it was with trepidation that I applied paint. I knew the brush would just bounce over the surface and make lumpy edges, so I did not put on my magnifying glasses. If I can’t see the lumpy edges, they don’t exist. 

See? no lumpy edges! The colored pencil version of the first pair is taped alongside so I can match the colors.

It seemed prudent to step back and see how things look from a distance. The first gekko matches the sycamore leaves in the background exactly.

Don’t be chicken and cower with nothing but familiar green paint . . . pick another color and get on with it.

This is how it looked after 3-1/2 hours of painting. It was fun to mix up so many different colors instead of painting miles of trees in 3 versions of dark green. The sun was creeping closer and closer, and although the board was still in the shade, the painter was not. So, I loaded my supplies into the car, stepped back for another photo, and then headed back to the studio for other work. (In case you were wondering, I LOVE the variety in my job/career/business/occupation!)

I can see that some of these little guys need fattening, and it is possible that I will ask Customer if I can add some things in the open spaces around the edges and corners. I’m thinking sycamore leaves might be nice. . . sycamores are native to Three Rivers; gekkos are not. But, Customer is in charge of the content of her mural, so again, more will be revealed. . . .

Gecko/Gekko Mural, Day One

Customer approved the colors and arrangement of the geckos with interlocking tails, so I packed up my supplies and drove to the river gazebo. The board is a good height for painting, the river is roaring, and there is great shade in the morning. I’m going to enjoy this job!

Where is this place? So glad you asked! It is in Three Rivers, on the North Fork of the Kaweah River, next door to the Arts Center, and it is called “The Bridge House” on VRBO. Here is the link: The Bridge House The gazebo is across the street, and was built on a patio overlooking the river, incorporating bridge abutments from the bridge that washed out in the flood of ’55.

First, the board needed to be painted. I had a partially used gallon of “High Hiding White”, which sounded just right.

I put a coat of white on the board, then went home with some specific measurements so I could figure out how to get the design from 8-1/2×11″ paper onto a 20″x 10′ board. It took a fair amount of measuring and math, tracing and transferring, but eventually I had it on tissue paper, the appropriate size.

When I returned to the gazebo, I saw it needed a second coat of High Hiding White to hide the first coat. This gave me time to think about how to transfer the image from tissue to the board. 

I used blue chalk on the back side of the tissue, taped the pattern to the board in the center, and rubbed it with my finger.

Can you see it?

Neither can I. This will have to be continued on another day when the shade has returned.

Gecko or Gekko?

I don’t know the correct way to spell gekko/gecko. Both seem to work.

Who cares? (WHAT?? The Typo Psycho actually doesn’t care how something is spelled??) When I spelled it with 2 k’s, I found better images on Google.

A customer has asked me to design a mural of gekkos/geckos, because they are a symbol of welcome. Here are photos of some of the steps so far, using Photoshop Elements (that’s the baby version) to see how things might look.

Better if that board is painted first. . .

Nope, Customer has a stylized gecko/gekko she likes better than the photographic look here. What can I do with this?

She preferred the 3rd arrangement and suggested colors that she likes. I colored them (on copies with colored pencil) and photoshopped them onto the board.

Mind reading isn’t my strong suit, so it takes multiple sketches, colored sketches and photoshopped versions to see if I am able to portray the customer’s vision.

I await her response. . . more will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

. . . and you thought I just sit around drawing all day? Nope. Sometimes I get to color too.

 

Repainting Mineral King, Day Eleven

On Saturday, there were a lot of Model A Fords in Exeter. The weather was a bit iffy, but after a phone call, I donned my painty pants and headed down the hill. I tried my best to not think about all the things to do at home, and listening to the audio version of Cry, The Beloved Country really helped. (Anyone read this book? It’s about South Africa in the 1940s.)

Because of the rain, I was able to fill my water bucket by scooping up from a puddle. Very convenient. Next, I worked on the “hidden” lantern. It was blue the day before.
I added a coffee pot to make up for the one I lost. This was all just sort of fiddly stuff, waiting for the tour groups to appear. The first group came quickly and I didn’t have my camera handy, but Betsy did. Look at all these interested people – what an audience!Then my buddy Jay showed up. (Yes, I was lost on the wrong mural.) If Jay can drive a Model A, I figured he can back up and turn around a Freightliner. Yeah, sure, I prolly coulda* done it myself, but Jay is a farmer, and farmers can drive anything and do it right the first time.


See? Perfect! I didn’t even need a stepladder to reach those upper blue trees. 
This was my view of the mural, from the very very convenient placement of the truck for trotting back and forth to see how things look from a distance.

The second group arrived, and this time I was able to take their photo and speak from my elevated platform. 

They invited me to lunch, so after meeting and greeting a few other mural visitors, I put a bunch of orange traffic cones out and left the Freightliner hogging up the alley.

After lunch, I fiddled around a bit more on the parts I could easily reach, and finally decided that I was perfectly capable of repositioning the truck myself.

Nothing to it. Might get a job with a trucking company when this mural is finished.

I camouflaged the lantern a bit more, and finally tackled the remaining blue patches. 

Now that the end is in sight, I am wanting to slow down and detail everything within an inch of its life. In spite of all my lack of confidence, I do feel quite proud of and connected to this mural. Each time I’ve worked on it, I’ve met nice people and built up my skills at muralizing.

P.S. Larry warned me about running at age 79. He said he was fine at 78, but now that he is 79, it just doesn’t work.

*”Prolly coulda” – I know it is “probably could have” but I wanted to sound like a trucker.

Repainting Mineral King, Day Ten

When I arrived at the mural on Friday a.m., this was my view. Sunny day ahead?

This is the area where I wanted to start, so I studied it for awhile to figure out how to blend old blue with the new green, way up on the wall.

I mixed a bluish green and blended the new with the old so the transition isn’t abrupt.

Hey look! The City of Exeter had 2 great guys working who did me the favor of removing the weed piles!

A little more green has been applied. Hard to tell the difference.

Now look – lots more green. I made a bit of a box around the signature but haven’t decided if I need to paint it out and re-sign it or just leave it old and blue. And bye-bye, sunshine.

At quitting time, I left a blue patch. . .

. . . and a blue lantern.

Here’s a weird deal: last week a friend and I were strolling through the murals and she spotted this.

So what? Okay, look more closely.

I never heard of this before UNTIL the very day I saw the box. That morning, one of the truck’s owners stopped by and told me the truck is actually owned by Fremont Fruit. Say what? What does this have to do with Botkin Bros.?

Mysteries, unsolved mysteries.

Nice blue.

P.S. Lots of visitors but not as many as on Thursday. Larry stopped by the truck along the sidewalk and asked, “Does this mean you are almost finished?” I’m guessing about 2 more painting days ought to do the trick, which will make 12 days, as I predicted. 

Repainting Mineral King, Day Nine

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AUDREY!

What a wonderful painting day! The weather seemed iffy, and I was reluctant to leave home, but after two phone calls to verify a rainless situation, I left. Made it a mile, turned around and went back for my lunchbox. 

On this post, I will put the explanations beneath the photos. I know that sometimes it is confusing. I am often confused, with a mind blurred by exhaustion when I write these posts.

The redbud is in bloom, there was a fire in the wood stove (yikes, don’t let the pollution police see that photo), the fake lawn is mowed (weeds, not synthetic lawn), there are flowers, weeds to be pulled, and my one surviving dutch iris is in bloom. Drove down wishing I could stay home, but it was the best painting day I’ve had so far. It never was hot!

This area seemed so small after I finished it on Monday. I felt discouraged.

“Small”? It is about 4 feet wide. It would take me a month to do an oil painting of that size! Buck up, Buckwheat. You are right on schedule.

This snapshot of the old Mineral King store appeared to have lost its shadow. I worked on that for a little variety. It still doesn’t show well, so I’ll strengthen the contrast on another day.

My updated banner arrived and Trail Guy got it ready to hang. It won’t fit on the back end of the Freightliner, so I hung it on the side. I’m flexible like that.

Here is the old banner, acting as a shade device in the windshield of the Freightliner. 

When I stopped painting around 12:30, this was how things looked. I felt hopeful that perhaps I will be able to finish it in the estimated time frame of 12-16 days.

I chose a triangular area on the upper left side of the old store snapshot. It helps to define areas to complete so that there is a sense of progress.

It was a day of many visitors, so many groups and pairs that I gave up writing them down. Lots of explaining about the murals, Mineral King, the reason for repainting, Exeter, even talking about why chains are required in Sequoia when there is no ice on the road. And, showing people where the hidden items are.

Next, it was time to beepbeep, back the truck up. Piece of cake – rear outer tire on the curb, no problem.

You can see the bed is sort of tilted, because the curb is about 3 inches higher than the asphalt here. But, I can deal with a bit of a slope, because I am flexible like that.

Look at that – the inner tire is floating up in the air!

Today’s visitors were too numerous to list. There were folks from Tulare, Visalia, San Francisco, Fresno, and Clovis, Redlands, Vancouver (Washington), plus an entire busload from People’s Church in Fresno. Most of the semi-locals had out of town guests with them. This is EXACTLY what the mural team had in mind when we began the project 21 years ago. My friend GE stopped by as did my friend MG. That was a treat! Larry said “Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Whatever it is!” 

 

Hidden Items in Murals

When Exeter began its mural project, I was the president and had no earthly idea how big this thing, this rescue of a city, this PROJECT would become. The mural team was fantastic, and we figured out how to make this happen together. Then, one of the early artists, Nadi Spencer of Three Rivers, hid something in her mural.

WOW! What an excellent idea! The mural team ran with it.

When I painted the first Mineral King mural in 2009, I hid 12 things, 3 per panel, 4 panels. I posted about it here, with a contest for finding the 12 without even knowing what they were. My drawing student Adalaide won, with determination, confidence and focus like I have seldom witnessed.

As I repaint this mural, I sometimes can’t find the hidden objects, and sometimes they are too faded to see. I’m trying to keep it the same, but have lost a coffee pot and added a 13th object.

Here are photos of most of the hidden items as they appeared originally. Since the repainting of the mural is still in progress, we don’t yet know how the hidden items will appear when it is finished.

I’m keeping quiet about #13 (unless you happen to be a mural tour guide or Betsy, my mural boss, or the drawing student who provided the inspiration, thanks, Kelvin!)

 

 

Repainting Mineral King, Day Eight

It wasn’t hot Monday! I thought I’d be able to paint on the Mineral King mural in Exeter (please excuse the redundancy – it is for the search engines) until around 5 p.m., but no way because I am a middle-aged wuss who ran out of gas.

A pleasant day with lots of interesting folks stopping by. I’ll put the list at the end.

The day’s work began with detailing the area below Farewell Gap, while standing on the ground. This is what I consider to be the focal point of the mural, but with something this wide, there are many focal points. It’s because this area is closest to the valley floor of Mineral King, even though the mural isn’t tall enough to include the valley floor.

This is how it looked after 1-1/2 hours of painting. Felt quick, but needed more detailing. Plus, there is still a blue space, which probably measures 2×4 feet. That would be a large painting by itself, but on this mural it is about the relative size of a postage stamp.

When I took a brief break at noon, this is how things looked. Lots of little dabs, softening edges, roughing up parts that looked too smooth, fiddling, “perfecting”, which is actually not possible with these huge brushes, at least as I define “perfect” (and “huge”).

Next it was time to climb up on the bed of the truck, and move into Panel #4. (Wait! it is only Day Eight, and this is supposed to happen on Day 10 at the earliest!) Some of it is too high to reach from the step ladder while leaning across the void, now that I am not putting the rear tire on the curb. Gonna have to come up with a plan for this.

After 2 hours of painting, this is all I’ve done?? It is probably a lot of real estate, but in contrast to all that remains, it ain’t much. That’s okay, this is only day eight. There’s plenty of time. . .

At quitting time, which was only around 3:30 (what a wuss), this is all that was covered. I also poured some paints from the buckets into the little containers, mixed some more gray and another green, and talked to a lot of people. (Didn’t want you to think that all I do is stand around and paint.)

Look at the day’s interactions:

  1. Anibar and Marcos from the City of Exeter checked in to say hello and exchange small talk about our weekends.
  2. Dan from the large and well-stocked antique store The Grove stopped by to introduce and be friendly.
  3. Mrs. Homeowner of the Three Rivers house that I painted last year came by. You can see her house here.
  4. A couple of guys walked past and commented that, “Some tough people lived in those houses!” They were referring to the cabins in the snapshots on the mural. I said that they were summer homes only and that I thought it took more toughness to deal with the summers down the hill than to live in cabins up the hill. 
  5. A woman came by from Tulare who said she’s about to move to Colorado. We had a nice conversation about what it is like to radically change locales. She’s lived in lots of places, and said the best thing she does is to first find a church. Then the other things work themselves out. I was severely traumatized by moving the 14 miles from Lemon Cove to Three Rivers 18 years ago, and can’t imagine changing states (although it is tempting at times, particularly tax time, election time, bad air time, Sequoia prescribed burning time. . . never mind.)
  6. A man and woman stopped by on their lunch breaks. He sells Kirby vacuums door-to-door and is an ex-Marine. Very engaging guy, probably does well. She works for Monrovia Nursery, grew up in So. Dakota, and hasn’t yet experienced summer here. Good luck!
  7. Tim and Elizabeth from Stanford University stopped by. He is now working in ag around here, she isn’t yet graduated, and they are very interested in Mineral King. Welcome, and I hope to see you this summer up the hill!
  8. Joanne, a mural tour guide stopped by, so I showed her the latest hidden item. 
  9. Anibar and Marcos stopped by again on their way back to the City yard for the day. Really nice guys, and very hard-working. I feel as if I have a pair of protectors near by, not that I need any.

No painting on Tuesday or Wednesday this week. If it isn’t raining, I’ll paint Thursday, Friday and Saturday.