“Last” is one of those many faceted English words. Here it means the most recent Farewell Gap, Mineral King oil paintings.
There are more depictions of Farewell Gap, on murals, in pencil and in 2 coloring books (drawn in ink). However, in the interest of relieving monotony, I won’t continue this theme in other media. (Did you know that “media” is the plural of “medium”? “Medium” when it means material used for making art, not the size of my clothing.)
Tomorrow we will take a final look at the Farewell Gap paintings.
Not really oil painting in Mineral King – oil paintings of Mineral King, painted in Three Rivers.
As a studio artist, I work from my photos. The variations are based on size and shape of painting (square, rectangular, really rectangular – and never horizontal for this scene, although that is an interesting idea). The variations also happen with time of day and time of year and type of snowfall and flow of water AND where I stood to take the photo. Plus, sometimes I juice up the colors a little more than natural. Sometimes I work at tight realism, and other times I try to loosen up. That isn’t natural to me, but is certainly faster.
These all look sort of dark, but I think it was the way I photographed them, not the paintings themselves. 2014 wasn’t a dark year. 2015 was a dark year, but we’ll have to see if that sadness was reflected in my paintings tomorrow.
One time I painted the Mineral King scene of Farewell Gap with the Crowley family cabin plein air. That was very difficult – the light and colors kept changing, people kept asking what I was doing (umm, skateboarding?), and I had to keep scooting out of the way of cars.
I don’t remember which one it was or how it turned out. I had only been painting a few months and thought that plein air painting was necessary to learning. It may have been, but mostly what I learned was how grateful I was to be a studio painter, working in a controlled and quiet environment from my photos.
That’s a new twist on an old theme.
Since I have about 32 oil paintings of Farewell Gap with the Crowley family cabin in Mineral King, let’s keep going. You can evaluate my progress (or lack thereof).
I painted it often in 2012.
The Roman numeral numbering system isn’t consistent here. Sometimes I called a small version simply “Mineral King”, sometimes I included it in the consecutive numbering.
Come back on Monday to see how I painted the scene in 2013.
That’s how I paint – layer after layer after layer. The Artspeak word for that is “glazing”, but I prefer English.
Layer one – Should have begun with the sky, but I asked my boss and she said, “Do whatever you want, if you think you’re so smart!” I didn’t want to mix up sky color – lazy or unmotivated or just rebellious that day, and my boss wasn’t paying attention anyway.
I’ve painted this Mineral King scene a few times before, so sometimes I just want to experiment because it gets a little boring. Maybe I ought to try painting it without looking at photos – that would be a challenge.
But I digress. Layers, we were talking about layers on Mineral King oil paintings. Or layers of Mineral King oil paintings. I could fill a room. . . I wonder if you could arrange them in order of experience. . . I wonder if I could.
Whoops. There were a lot of unphotographed layers in between the first picture and this one. Guess I got into it and forgot to show you the steps.
Now you can see the baby steps, incremental changes as the photos move along.
It is time to dry, and then I will put in all the tiny improvements and details that you need to see in person to properly appreciate. It might even require reading glasses, cheaters, middle-aged-magnifiers to see those details.
I’m not sure I like the willows that are not yet leafed out. . . they do pull your eye to the cabin, but the cabin pulls your eye to the cabin.
(Hey! Stop pulling my eye – you are going to pop out my contact lens that way!)
Next. . . a new ugly beginning, waiting for layers.
A friend said he disagrees with the idea that California is land of fruits and nuts. He said it is more like a bowl of granola: fruits, nuts and flakes.
I wonder why there is a correlation between flakes and artists. Artists have often been called flaky, and I work very diligently to blast that stereotype from my profession.
In my experience, it is contractors who are flaky. When I find a builder or a repairman who returns calls, shows up on time and actually calls when he cannot make it, I rejoice and spread the word. They are rare birds.
And here is a not so rare bird.
Hey, Rabbi Google (as we were taught to call it while in Israel), these are oil paintings – an orange, pomegranates, and a California quail.
When I begin a new painting, it is ugly. Messy. Rough. Weird.
Those are discouraging words, here at my home on the range.
However, after oil painting for more than 10 years, I’ve come to accept that the start to an oil painting is ugly. Gotta start somewhere! My method of layering, called “glazing” (are your eyes glazing over yet?) brings improvement with each pass over the canvas.
Honestly, it is fun sometimes to just slap paint on in any old way and think, “So what? It’s a long process, and it will get better, so who cares?”
This attitude and approach is probably causing some of you to twitch, and would cause some of my former art teachers to palm their foreheads or bash something or yell at current students.
Payback, you former mean art teachers, payback. I never did like mean teachers who yelled or criticized, but always loved the ones who taught. (Thank you again, Mr. Stroben!)
Now I get to be both an artist, and a drawing teacher. Always helpful (I hope!), honest, and ever so slightly weird, but never never mean to my students.
Anyone want to sign up for drawing lessons?
I paint a lot of fruit. I don’t paint very many nuts.
I drew walnuts a few years ago (feels like 5 years, probably is 10).
Wow. That’s pretty good, if I do say so myself! And I do. I LOVE to draw. However, drawings need frames, and oil paintings sell better than pencil. Sometimes I ask my boss if I can draw, and she says I can after I finish all my work. Sigh.
A couple of years ago (feels like 2, must be 4), a friend commissioned me to do some 2×2″ paintings of all the best selling produce in California. Maybe it wasn’t the best selling – maybe it was the crops that California produces the most of.
Those are the only paintings I’ve ever done of nuts – a walnut on the upper left and almonds on the upper right.
Pretty cool idea, eh?
Happy Birthday, Judy-O!!
Have you heard California referred to as “the land of fruit and nuts”?
If you take the statement figuratively, it is referring to people in the state.
If you take the statement literally, it is referring to the vast amount of food produced here in Central California.
As a Central California artist, it is my duty, nay, my calling, to portray these things.
There are fall shows coming, and these require items to sell. When I do shows in places other than Three Rivers, paintings of fruits sell well. They sell steadily all year, and definitely do better down the hill than the mountain scenes.
That lower painting? It was this:
It has been collecting dust since January. Chances are good that if I didn’t like it enough to finish painting it, no one would like it enough to write a check for it.
I asked my boss and she said I could cover it with pomegranates.
It’s good to be the boss.