Inching Along Layer by Layer

I’m guessing that I took the reference photo for this painting as a passenger in our pick-’em-truck as we returned home from a road trip when the Rough Fire was dwindling in 2015. I wish I knew where I was, because I’d like to take more photos of the same scene in various seasons and lights.

These giant oil paintings aren’t really too hard for me, but I do run into difficulties when my reference photos are smoky, blurry, from different angles, in differing light, or too small. A tiny blur in a picture becomes a large blur in a larger painting, so I NEED to know what I am painting in order for it to be believable.

Now I have to figure out what to put in the various ridges that will pass as believable texture.

Never mind. I’ll just work on the orange trees in the foreground.

I’ll keep dabbing, layering, and searching for this scene in real life. There is no deadline on this painting.

A Situation

A customer/friend bought a painting off my website. She requested that I paint in an animal so the size of the trees is truly evident.

OH NO! It already sold, and I didn’t take it off my website! 

I can’t find the original photo so have to work off the photo of the sold painting. It is always best to start with the original, but sometimes stuff just can’t be helped.

Pippin was happy to have me in his house. He lets me borrow it for a painting workshop.
Hey, is that a bear??
Here it is with a bear this time. When it dries, I will scan it and it will look better than this semi-reflective photo while it is wet.

Dry enough, scanned, heading to the Post Office today!

Inching Along the Big One

How does one keep coming up with appealing titles for the same topic?

One doesn’t.

This painting is too tall to reach the top when the easel is on the table, so I set it up on the platform of the painting workshop with the doors open.
Trail Guy helped me find and retrieve my big painting easel, which he had stored out of sight and out of reach. It is a simple streamlined design and doesn’t take up much space.
This is S L O W.
Now it is at the “Best-Viewed-From-The-Back-of-a-Fast-Horse” stage.
I bet the oil painting of a Giant Sequoia on the easel has already taken longer than this mural in acrylics took. Of course, using a 1-1/2″ brush instead of a 3/8″ makes a difference, but I can’t figure out how to use a fatter brush and get results that aren’t cringe-worthy in oils.

When I begin to put the details in, I’ll stop moaning about the pace. It helps to listen to a book on CD, and I’ve got a good one going right now. One of Us by Tawni O’Dell is still good on CD #2. Time will tell (that’s what my Dad used to say instead of “more will be revealed”).

Odd Job

As an artist with a lengthy reputation of reliability and skill in the same county for several decades, I get asked to do many odd things in the name of art. It is just part of the business of art.

Some friends have a painting of Mineral King by a long-deceased relative, someone who wasn’t very familiar with Mineral King. They didn’t like something about it, and asked me if I could change it. I enjoy challenges like this, so I said yes. The back of the painting is signed with the year 1964.

What’s wrong with this picture?
My friends’ beef with the painting is the scary face in the rock.
The lump on Farewell Gap really bothered me.
Little Red Riding Hood is seriously out of proportion; the upper body is too big for the lower body.
Scary face gone!
Lumpectomy performed on the right flank of West Florence (and Bearskin added to Vandever).
Now Little Red Riding Hood will be able to hike better.

Mucho Bettero. My friends reassured me that Great Aunt Whose-it won’t haunt me for messing with her painting. Someday in the future, someone may retouch my paintings, and to them I say, “Go for it!”

Recently Completed

See? I have been working, despite the all the travelogue posts. (It takes more days to show and tell about a trip than the trip actually lasted).

“First Granddaughter” (no, not mine!), 8×10″, pencil, private collection
Mineral King Alpenglow, 6×18″, oil on wrapped canvas, private collection

Plein Air at Home

We interrupt this travelogue to bring you more examples of practicing and putting to use the skills I learned in Georgia.

Certainly not finished by my standards.

The Kaweah Post Office was awful. I spent more time on it in the painting studio.

Better. The colors didn’t photograph very true. And would you believe I lost 2 palette knives while I worked on this by the side of the road? How annoying.

The next time, I set up inside the painting workshop with the giant doors open up to the outside. This one turned out a bit better than the P.O.

This is my view out the big doors.
It started out in the usual scary manner.
Color helps.
Am I finished? Who can say except Laurel, and she isn’t here. Looks kind of messy to me.

Finally, in preparation for an upcoming exhibit called “Seascapes”, I went through my photos of beach scenes and chose one to try in the plein air method. This means painting quickly, front to back, dark to light, and finishing in one session. Have you ever heard of someone doing plein air painting from a photo? I haven’t.

The blocking in stage.
Beginning with color in the front. I love blues and blue-greens.
I liked working on this one.
I incorporated my own techniques for getting things more accurate. I wonder if Laurel would be banging her head against the wall at my rebellious ways.

This one was completed while listening to Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty get interviewed by Donald Miller. He talked a lot about having fun, and I had fun while painting this. Will I have the courage to enter this in “Seascapes”? More will be revealed.

Vertical Mineral King Painting

In looking through my photos to choose new Mineral King subjects (or new approaches to old subjects), I kept going back to a photo of some fisherpeople in the stream. Finally I decided to narrow it down to the parts that matter and try it on a vertical 6×18″ canvas.

You can see the first pass within this jumble of paintings in their embryonic stage.
Top down is the same as back to front in this painting. This works out well for me, since I “draw” with my paintbrush, often resting my hand on the painting. Many painters use a “mahl stick” to rest their hands on, but I paint too small for this to be of any help. Besides, I don’t like extra stuff, gear, tools, things. The more stuff I own, the more stuff breaks and gets lost and fills up my brain and life.
Slowly crawling down the canvas.
After all those greens, it is fun to put in blue for the stream.

This is as far as I can go until things dry. I’m unsure about the fisherpeople. The largest one is about 1/16″ high on the photo and appears to be riding a bike. That can’t be right. So I will probably look through my photos and see if there is one of Trail Guy or Trail Girl (I haven’t told you about her) that would be better. Trail Guy used to take Trail Girl fishing so she could hold the fish and talk to them before she released them. She is grown up now and we miss her something fierce, but she has a real job and doesn’t live in her parents’ basement. That’s good, I guess.

Painting Animals

No motivational quotes today, just some paintings in progress.

A little more detailing, a signature, and BaddaBing, BaddaBoom. (Cowboy Bert used to say that when he meant a thing was finished.)
Maybe these roosters could be named BaddaBing and Badda Boom.
Tucker had a few days of being under the weather and off his feed. (Any more cliches to describe this?) He’s back to normal except a bit more tired than usual.
Scout’s ready for anything.
Meanwhile, just outside the door. . .

P.S. Here is the promised info on the memorial service for The Cowboy.
Bert Raymond Weldon, May 21, 1956 — January 8, 2019
CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND RECEPTION Friday, March 15, 2019, 11:00 a.m. CrossCity Christian Church, 2777 E. Nees Avenue, Fresno, California 93720

Eggs, One More Time

Before we have one more little talk about eggs, here is Samson, in case you were wondering.Ethan’s eggs are so interesting to me that I took many photos and started 2 new paintings. These are in the category of This Looks A Little Bit Too Hard So I Will Challenge Myself.

The little plate will really test my ability to control a paintbrush and see elliptical shapes. 

The egg needs to become the right color. Why? The current color is believable, but I am always testing my ability to mix colors accurately. And that plate might just be the undoing of me.

Meanwhile, Samson is testing himself while neighbor dog Tombo is oblivious.

 

Speaking of Eggs

Yesterday’s post was about not drawing a face smaller than an egg; today’s is about Ethan’s Eggs.

Who is Ethan? He is a kid in town who raises chickens that produce eggs of several colors. They are quite beautiful, so I decided to convert a painting of a plum to a painting of Ethan’s eggs. Something about the plum didn’t suit me, so I just made it go away.

Turning things sideways or upside down helps me see the shapes more accurately.

I wasn’t sure of the accuracy of the colors working from a photo, so I brought the eggs to the studio to verify.

I think one more pass over the canvas ought to finish this up nicely. 

This is 8×8″ and will sell for $100. Or not. Maybe I will turn it into a pine cone in a year or two. . .