Better When Scanned

 

Completed Oil Paintings, Scanned as Promised

These are the recently painted oil paintings of Mineral King and Three Rivers scenes, along with some poinsettias.

Honeymoon Cabin I, 6×18″, $165

Mineral King Alpenglow, 6×6″, $65

Mineral King Nature Trail, 6×6″, $65

Still River at Sunset, 8×10″, $135, SOLD 

Summer Hill, 8×8″, $108

Alta & Moro After a Storm, 6×18″, $165

Poinsettia 1 and Poinsettia 2, 5×7″, BOTH SOLD

Calendars

2023, Mineral King HIKES, still available here: Calendars

Gotta keep that back hidden from The Most Faithful Blog Commenter so you will need to click on the link to see it. 

Painting Three Rivers

Did you think I forgot these paintings? Not a chance; I have a little bazaar coming on November 19 in Three Rivers and need some appropriate merchandise (besides just 2023 calendars and cards and coloring books.)

Did I think you forgot them? Not gonna let you forget—don’t worry your pretty little head about that.

One:

(Please, do not sing about this.)

It is now finished, drying, and awaiting a scan so you can see the colors more accurately. The title is Alta Peak/Moro Rock View. (Yes, I know it is brilliant and clever and original.)

Two:

Just a bunch of yellow grass couldn’t possibly take that long, could it?

Yes, it could and it is. It isn’t titled yet. Perhaps “Yellow Grass and Live Oaks” would be appropriately creative and original. . .

Three:

Mixing colors for this one has been fun. My paintings tend to be all greens, grays, and browns, or nothing but orange (poppies and oranges, over and over).

How about calling it “Three Indian Grindholes on the Middle Fork of the Kaweah River in Three Rivers at Sunset”?

Nope. It is only an 8×10″ oil painting, so there isn’t enough room on the back of the canvas to write all that.

Part of the business of art is coming up with good titles. I’ve got some thinking to do.

P.S. Happy Birthday, Laurie!

 

Making Three Improvements

Improvements

I brought home the paintings from Silver City that didn’t sell over the summer. My good friend helped me evaluate them honestly. I need the opinions of honest good friends, regular people rather than Educated Artist Type people, because regular people are my customers.

First:

Remember this?

I redid it like this:

Immediately someone said, “I want that!” However, I know her pretty well, and she is a talker and a dreamer. It ain’t a sale until money exchanges hands, and no money exchanged hands. So, I added a flag.

I’m certain that was the missing element.

Second:

Why didn’t this sweet little 6×6″ of aspens along the Nature Trail sell?

Because it didn’t have wildflowers!! (After this photo, I repaired the big red blob and changed my signature back to white).

Three:

Why do I still have this little painting of alpenglow on Vandever?

Because it wants brighter colors and more detail, of course.

The business of art requires honesty, realistic looks at sales and what customers want.

P.S. They’ll look better when scanned, and even better in real life.

 

A Short Painting Session, 3 Photos of 2 Paintings

I was able to slip another hour or two of painting into my other responsibilities.

Using the leftover blue and gray sky colors, I mixed a bit more Distant Mountain Blues and Grays in order to detail the mountains on two paintings. Both of these paintings feature Moro Rock and Alta Peak, standard landmarks seen from many places in Three Rivers.

The colors look a bit off in this photo, so I carried it outside. Then the colors looked very wrong. Nope, this is not being painted for Disneyland’s Small World (and please do NOT start singing.)

This view of Alta Peak and Moro Rock is from Kaweah Lake in early winter. In this scene, the lake is low (and behind the viewer) and there is some snow in the mountains because winter hasn’t begun in earnest.

It appears that winter has begun in earnest early this year!

My colored pencil artist friend from Kansas, Carrie Lewis, requested a guest post for her blog on last Saturday, so I wrote of my experiment using colored pencils in Mineral King, A Plein-Air Experiment.

2 Photos of 4 Paintings in Progress

November is my busiest month, workwise. Commissions, selling the 2023 calendar, the Holiday Bazaar, supplying the places that sell my work, planning for some (maybe) murals, working with an author as we close in on a 5-year project* together (he is writing, I’m editing)  . . . 

So, I paint when I can fit it in, mostly in 1-3 hour sessions. 

It is necessary to be efficient in these sessions, so I do things like mix up some sky colors and then do just the skies on all four paintings of Three Rivers scenery.


But then I couldn’t stop listening to a certain song, so I kept hitting repeat and painted some mountains. It was a logical next step because I was able to mix those sky colors into Distant Mountain Blue (but not too distant).

I’d like to put a lot more detail into these mountains, and probably want to put as much detail as possible in the entire  picture. But for now, it is time to stop playing the song over and over and over. . . .

*The project began when the writer asked me for some illustrations in September 2017.  Here are three posts about those illustrations. One, Two, Three.

Sold in August, September, and October

Sequoia, citrus, Mineral King. . . all the usual subjects one would expect from an artist in Tulare County. However, I have heard Morro Bay referred to as “Visalia West”, so maybe the beach scene is Tulare Countyish. (I wish). The pomegranate is colored pencil, something I haven’t tried or sold in many years.

I try to show this in sizes that are proportionately relative to one another here; closies count.

Just because, here are links to previous posts of Sold art.

Sold in Summer

Sold in April and May

Sold in February and March

New and Improved

NEW

Here are three new oil paintings of oranges (thank you, Captain Obvious). Each one is 5×7″, on a board or panel, and comes with an easel for easy display on a shelf, $60, and available through the Mural Gallery in Exeter. (Actually, only two are available because one is spoken for, but I don’t know yet which one.)

IMPROVED

These two oil paintings of the Kaweah Post Office have been reworked, lighting corrected, detail added, fuss, fiddle, fix. The top one will go with me to the Holiday Bazaar (scroll down) at the Three Rivers Memorial Building on November 19 (unless it sells first, 6×12″, $125). The second one will return to Kaweah Arts for sale there: 8×10″, $125.

P.S. They always look better in person. I’ve decided to not embarrass myself again by showing you the “Before” version against the “After” version. 

Painting in Order to Sell

Farewell at Dusk, 10×30″, oil on wrapped canvas, $500

There is an ongoing topic among artists about whether or not it is right to paint in order to sell. In general, the two schools of thought are:

  1. Do Your Own Thing And Express Yourself And If Nothing Sells At Least You Haven’t Sold Your Soul
  2. You Are In Business So You Had Best Please The Customers And Be Grateful They Like Your Work Enough To Part With Their Hard-Earned Dollars

It is clear that I belong in School #2.

Paint it out

Sometimes I paint something because I love it, and then I have to paint it out because no one in the local market of buyers agrees. The recent conversion of a river scene to sequoia trees is a prime example.

Paint it again

Sometimes I paint something that sells, so I paint it again and it sells again, and so on and so forth. Here is a recent example of that situation. Six times? Seven? I lost count. Because it was so popular, I painted the most recent version in hopes of selling it at the Silver City Store this summer. (Nope. . . is it waiting for you?)

Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint IX, 12×24″, oil on wrapped canvas, $550

Paint what I love

And the best of all is when I paint something just because I want to, and then it sells. But sometimes that feels disappointing because I wanted to keep it. (So what’s the problem? Just paint it again!)

Paint it better

Sometimes I paint something, it doesn’t sell, and then I have to figure out why not. I did that with this painting of redwood and dogwood, and it sold very quickly after the do-over. (I was tempted to name it Red Dog but knew that was a loser from a marketing standpoint.)

The challenge with every scene, but particularly those I’ve painted many times is to make it the absolute best I can every time. No auto-pilot, no “phoning it in”, no sleep-painting. Focus, focus, focus. 

As I often tell Nancy of Kaweah Arts, “I came here to earn a living, and I’d rather repaint a scene that bores me than be a waitress.” 

The best way to not be bored while repainting a popular scene is to continually challenge myself to find a way to make it the best I can. Because. . .

I use pencil, oil paint, and murals to make art that people can understand of places and things they (not me) love, for prices that won’t scare them (but allow me to continue eating).

Cool Enough To Paint the Kaweah Post Office

(I don’t mean that I painted the building.) I am referring to the weather in my painting workshop, equipped with a fairly adequate swamp cooler, unless it is over 95 and/or humid.

Every year people say, “It has been such a hot summer!” as if that is news. Every summer in Tulare County is a hot one. My theory is that if it starts mild, you pay in September and October. This is the real world, muchachos, and you are in it.

Kaweah Arts had two oil painting versions of the Kaweah Post Office for sale. This is a quaint little old building three miles up the North Fork of the Kaweah River, which, until recently, was the smallest operating post office in the United States. Alas, it sold, and the new owner closed it. It is still cute and quaint, so I didn’t paint out the images on those canvases.

However, I decided that I could do a better job.

BEFORE:

One would think that I could just make this up without a photo after painting it about 20 times (if you count the do-overs, it is probably more). One might be right, but one isn’t going to know, because I won’t be attempting it AND I might not need to paint it any more. 

DURING:

BEFORE:

 

DURING:

These are hard to photograph while on the easels. When they are dry, I’ll scan them for you (and for my records, of course.)

This is a first for the aloof Jackson. He has never inspected my work before.

 

Finished and Begun, New and Improved

Finished

(Improved) North Fork of the Kaweah, 10×10″, $150


(New) Two Big, 6×12″, $125

(New) Giant Tree, 10×10″, $150

Begun:

 

The oranges are sold; the pumpkins are on standby, because if the other pumpkin painting doesn’t sell, this base coat just might become something else.