These oil paintings have their first layer down.
These paintings are dry, scanned, and delivered to their stores. (And in the category of Wishful Thinking, perhaps they are sold.)
These paintings have some minor items added to make them a smidge better.
And writing the longest blog title ever.
Does this look finished to you? It’s not. When I was driving home a few evenings ago, I really studied the way the ridges change color as they recede into the distance.
So, I messed with them again. The differences are subtle, and now that I see it on my screen, I think it might even want a bit more adjusting. (The painting that never gets finished. . .)
Now there are oranges on the trees.
The blossoms popped out on the trees, and there are a few added in the border embellishment.
Now the smudgepot has been refined, the ground is lighter, the fallen oranges are a bit more visible, and there are two more smudgepots in the far distance, too small to see in this photo.
All that remains is a wind machine.
Maybe.
This is representative of Tulare County’s best features, according to me. The weird part is that I compiled the original pencil drawing using photos taken in Lemon Cove and Pauma Valley (in Sandy Eggo County.) I’m not showing you the pencil drawing again in case you are going to tell me all the ways I didn’t match it exactly.
The sky was bugging me, not just because of the uneven brush strokes. It seemed to be the wrong color.
So, I repainted it. Yeppers, better.
Those hills don’t look far enough away.
So, I lightened them and made them duller in color. (a little shiny-wet here)
Then I redid the dirt and the trees.
Prolly doesn’t make much difference from your point of view.
Now I have a list of 12 more things to fix, repair, repaint, relayer, re-detail. My patient customer said she’d like it in April, but didn’t specify a date.
When you look at my painting subjects, you might guess that orange is my favorite color. You’d be wrong. However, orange things are among my favorite things (not raindrops on roses).
The poppy painting is on the easel for consideration and contemplation. How can I make it better? Does it need to be made better? I have an idea for the first question, and the answer to the second question is “Maybe”.
The lemon isn’t orange. Well, duh. The Mural Gallery just sold a little lemon painting so I am painting a new one.
The larger commissioned painting is getting close to completion; the poppy painting is new, and the lemon needs an orange to go with it for the Mural Gallery.
The orange painting is going quickly; the poppy painting is a little more difficult.
It’s from a photo I took up the North Fork of the Kaweah River a handful of years ago. I am not trying to copy every poppy exactly; ain’t nobody got time for that. Besides, nobody cares.
I think this is going to be a good one. My goal is to get it to Kaweah Arts in time for the studio tour on the weekend. It is a county wide studio tour. I’m not participating but am supporting Kaweah Arts in their efforts to draw many people in.
This is the little studio where I draw, not the room where I paint.
Jackson took my chair.
This is the room where I paint, called the workshop.
Two little poppy paintings, drying for Stem & Stone, a new gift shop in Three Rivers.
One little sequoia, also drying for the new shop.
Jackson joined me in the workshop because that is also the cat’s home/cafeteria.
I spent a morning inside that open door, working on the unusual commissioned oil painting.
Let’s do a series of progressive painting photos (the first two appeared on February 27).
The studio sat empty beneath the flowering pear tree.
Pippin waited for me patiently, until he found something more interesting to investigate.
This painting seemed too bright. After studying it awhile, I decided to only tone down the brilliant green in the distance to push it farther away. (“Push it” visually, not warp the canvas.)
This is after:
Hmmm, that’s a pretty subtle difference, perhaps even dubious*. Might want to try that again later. In addition, the photography colors are significantly different.
Never mind. Let’s move ahead, shall we?
This painting looks scary in its beginning stages unless you happen to see it while galloping by on the back of a fast horse (or see it the size of a postage stamp on your phone).
After these fairly dissatisfactory adventures in oil painting, I returned to my pencils. This one has a story, which I’ll tell you when I know the ending. This is the sketch I sent to the customer to see if it matched her design expectations:
To be continued. . .
These paintings only show on my blog because I can’t remember how to get more than a handful of paintings to appear on the store part of my website. You may call or email or text if you’d like to buy any of these. Use the contact button on my website, because if I type the info in here, the cyberjerks might harass me.
Painting these is almost just as much fun as drawing with pencil, especially when I get to the third pass over the painting, where I get to draw with my paintbrush.
P.S. There is sales tax if you live in California. Figure in $8, and I’ll pay the postage.
After spending a week doing plein air paintings at the beach in October, I could not wait to get home where I could paint waves and the ocean in my painting workshop, where the waves were frozen in motion on photographs. I love those blues and teals and greens and splashing whites, and I wanted to capture that in over-the-top detail.
“Over-the-top” hasn’t quite happened, but I am pretty happy so far. I’ve shown you Pacific Ocean I, II, III, and now it is time for IV, V, and VI.
A friend knows someone with a store somewhere in a town on the California coastline, and she is SURE the paintings will sell there. The store has very limited shelf space, so instead of putting the paintings on little easels like I had envisioned, she said they will need to hang.
That took some searching, but I eventually found something. The choices were to buy a package of 2 for maybe $4, or a package of 100 for $8. After a brief struggle between the frugal part of my brain against the side that doesn’t want to own extra stuff, I ordered 100.
Pacific Ocean VII, VIII, and IX are wet at the time of this writing.
Once again, I am counting my chickens before they hatch, which might be my strongest talent.
When I started my art business, I named it “Cabin Art”, or perhaps “Cabinart*”, because my favorite subject matter was architecture, mostly cabins.
As my skill and confidence grew, my favorite subject to draw (and eventually paint) was the Oak Grove Bridge.
During a particularly wet winter after several dry ones, I became enamored with rushing water.
Next, it was orange groves with foothills and mountains in the distance.
After a handful of years of painting multiple variations on this theme, I seem to be transitioning into beach scenes.
More on that later. . . Monday is time for a monthly Learned post.
*For a typo-psycho, I certainly am ambivalent about the spelling of my own studio name.
