Variety in the Working Life of a Central California Artist

There you go, Search Engines. Hope you like that ridiculously long title.

I had a day of great variety, all of it interesting, all of it productive

  1. This book, Adventures in Boy Scouting, will soon be available as an ebook through Bookbaby. It took a lot of learning, and a lot of proofreading. The print version is available at the Three Rivers Mercantile, Three Rivers Historical Museum, and BookBaby.com. 
  2. After enjoying the nice fire in the house (in the wood stove—no need to be concerned) while proofreading (we had a few cold days), I moved to the painting workshop to do a bit of polishing on the Fiftieth Bouquet oil painting. “Polishing” here means making some small corrections. The roses, red bow, vase, coaster and background are not finished.
  3. I detailed the mountains and put a second layer on my favorite scene.

  4. Then I left the painting workshop and moved into the studio to finish a drawing. After scanning it, I sent it to the customer to get her approval before spray-fixing it and then adding color.

It was a good day of working on projects that are all presold. While it is fun to just paint and draw what I want, it is more satisfying to paint and draw for other people, particularly when they choose subjects that float my boat.

In case you have forgotten because I haven’t shouted this at you for awhile:

Using pencils, oil paint, and murals, I make art that you can understand, of places and things you love, for prices that won’t scare you.

 

Seven New Oil Paintings Available

These seven oil paintings are now finished, dry, scanned, and available for purchase.

“Purchase” sounds so fancy; these paintings are ready to buy. (Is that better? Don’t want to get above my raising here.)

Navels, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×12″, $125 plus California sales tax IF YOU HAVEN’T MOVED AWAY YET
Poppy 59, oil on wrapped canvas, 4×6″, $50 plus 8% California sales tax
Poppy 58, 4×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $50 plus you know what
Poppy 57, 4×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $50 plus you know what
Poppy 56, 4×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $50 plus you know what
Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint VII, 6×12″, oil on wrapped canvas, $125 (plus 8% if you still live in California)
Craig Ranch, 8×10″, oil on wrapped canvas, $125 plus you know what if you live you know where

Any questions? Maybe the comment feature is working on this blog post. If not, we are probably friends in real life so you can email or call or lean out the door and yell or wave me over on the road or talk to me after church on Sunday. Lots of options for connecting.

Another Version of Sawtooth

Two years ago I had a great idea for an art project for Tulare County. I  asked important people with good connections how to pursue the idea, followed instructions to get put on an agenda for a quarterly meeting, wrote a letter as advised, put together a Powerpoint presentation, and then everything was cancelled due to The Plague.

An arts organization in Visalia has recently put out the word that there might be an upcoming project, based on the idea that I never got to present. A friend overheard and notified me, and now I am working on my submissions for the unnamed project, unnamed because it isn’t real yet and there hasn’t been a “Call To Artists”.

It calls for art that is horizontal in a 2:1 ratio. 

OF COURSE I thought of the current most popular subject matter that I paint, which is Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint.

Trouble with that is the verticality of the subject matter. Will this work horizontally? The best way to find out is to try it. 

Not wanting to spend a ton of time on a piece that might look wrong, I just did a quick messy first pass over the canvas of a 6×12 to get an idea whether or not it would be worth the effort.

If Sawtooth is big enough to matter, then the stream won’t fit. Black Wolf Falls barely fits. I am definitely fudging reality here. Does it matter? Does this work?

Maybe, maybe not.

Insert my regular cliché here; you know the one.

Back to Sawtooth

Remember all those oil paintings of Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint? Sunnypoint was a Forest Service campground in Mineral King closed in the 1970s (or was it the 1960s? I wasn’t there then.)

The view that has been so popular is a bit made up. When you are standing where I have stood to take so many photos, year after year, of the same scene, your eyes tell you that the barest tip of Sawtooth shows. When you leave the exact spot, you remember it as a place where Sawtooth, Black Wolf Falls, the stream, and wildflowers are all coexisting in beautiful harmony.

It is my job to gather up all those pieces of reality and combine them into a believable fantasy for you. This beautiful fantasy, which matches up with peoples’ memories, has brought me back to the easel once again.

After a week of messing around, taking walks, editing 2 books, and staying away from the painting workshop, I finally went back to work.

The work that remains after this dries:

  1. Add the wildflowers
  2. Fix whatever is wrong that I have noticed during the drying process
  3. Sign
  4. Let dry again
  5. Scan
  6. Varnish
  7. DELIVER!

There is more to the story of multiple iterations of the Sawtooth Near Sunnypoint paintings. Mañana. . .

Sold in December, Part 2

When I see all these sold pieces, both pencil drawings and oil paintings, I am astonished. Trail Guy and I loaded up “Images of Home” into the back of his pick-’em-up truck, and it felt as if I was taking home MORE than I hung at the show.

That feeling slapped me upside the confidence, making me want to paint over everything that didn’t sell and pull the drawings from the frames and shred them. Ridiculous. Several of the sold pieces happened outside of the show (all those repaints), and each time something sold, I replaced it with a new piece. 

So, having put to rest the foolishness of wanting to destroy my remaining work, let’s resume yesterday’s triumphant post of art that sold in December, shall we? 

Upon further reflection, I am realizing that several of these sold earlier in the fall but I didn’t show you. That brings December down to a more believable number of sales.

Sales, as Opposed to Tech Troubles

The year started in a somewhat ignominious manner with tech troubles. That stuff is quite alarming, upsetting, and interruptive. I combat this by reviewing all the sales in the previous month (necessary to pay for all the tech repairs, and I am sorry to report that no fat lady has sung yet).

I had sales through Kaweah Arts, the Mural Gallery, Exeter’s Courthouse Gallery, along with commissions. All is not lost – let’s rejoice together!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! Tune in tomorrow, same Bat time, same Bat channel.

P.S. Happy Birthday to Trail Guy!

Last Oil Commission of the Year

On December 31, it was cold and gray outside. This meant it would take awhile to get heat up near the easels in the painting workshop, so I chose to paint inside the house. 

The lady from Spain who bought a poppy and requested an orange and a pomegranate to match extended her stay here. (Clearly, she is liking our subject matter.) This meant there was enough time for me to paint a pomegranate. It made me wish I could get the orange painting back in order to touch it up, assign an inventory number, and scan it. (I painted the orange in a day while sitting at the Courthouse Gallery.)

It has a few days to dry before it is ready to be scanned and delivered. 

It is very pleasant to paint in the house – I sit at the dining table instead of standing at the easels. The room is warm, Trail Guy is hanging around, Pippin is in the living room (under strict rules), there are tunes. Yes, I can have tunes in the painting workshop but I generally listen to podcasts instead. Maybe I’ll get my hard-nosed work face in place a little later in the new year. But for now, this is my preference. 

Thank you, Señora España, for choosing the art of this Central California artist!

Almost Finished with the Sawtooth Paintings

At the time of this writing, 2 of the Sawtooth paintings are finished, and the third just needs a small area before joining the others in their finished state. I had leftover paint on my palette, so I painted the edges. This made them a bit too wet to handle, so #3 had to be on hold for a bit.

As I show you these photos of the paintings in progress, I get more and more confused as to which painting is in what stage; I’m like the mother of triplets who lost the note telling which kid has a mole on his 2nd toe or something else to distinguish them (but I don’t have difficulty in real life because they are 2 different sizes and have an inventory number on the backs).

Sometimes when I look at photos of the finished paintings, I see more things to correct. Unless they are glaring mistakes, I will ignore them. These patient customers would like their paintings sometime, preferably sooner rather than later.

Here – you can see a few more and join me in my state of confusion. This top one is finished, but we are hard pressed to tell in the high contrast sunshine.  The 16×20 is finished; the 11×14 beneath it isn’t – look at the trees on the right (middle) side. This one looks finished. I wonder if it is the 16×20 or one of the 11x14s. This one needs mid-ground trees and foreground grasses and flowers. Definitely not finished. This one appears to be finished. When there are grasses and tiny colored dots for flowers, it is finished.

What’s harder? Painting the same scene three times, or trying to sort the photos and show people? Or trying to comprehend a blog post about it? (See? I always have questions!)