Trail Guy and I took a walk. As we were approaching home, this is what we saw.
After this excitement (plus the usual mess of turkeys in the yard), I went into the workshop to work on three paintings. One needed finishing, one needed more detail, and one needed the first layer.
There is a marketing outfit for citrus, at least I think it is for marketing purposes. They have bought many pieces of orange-themed art from me through the years and are a pleasure to deal with.
Their annual banquet is coming up, and someone in the office asked me to lend them orange-themed art to decorate the lobby leading to the banquet room.
My 30+ years of experience tells me that my art won’t sell there. When the artist isn’t present and people are simply mingling, art does not sell itself. I am not invited to the banquet, and most likely I would decline the invitation. I have run out of the internal fire to schmooze and chit-chat in a loud room with the hopes of making connections that may or may not turn into work, and doing it in the town 30+ miles away at night when I am ready to park my patoot with a book and some knitting.
But this organization has been good to me, so if they want to borrow some art, my response is, “Certainly! How many pieces would you like?”
I took inventory and found 8 available pieces (one has to be borrowed from a gallery which is never open on the day when I am down the hill, but I will figure it out somehow). These are all similar scenes, and I decided that eight is not enough.
Here is a sample piece of my normal citrus scenes:
And here is what I need to paint, title, scan, and deliver DRY in time for the event:
This is a 10×10″ and a 6×18″, both a little different from my regular orange still-life paintings. Those regular ones sell steadily, but I bet most of the attendees to the banquet will have seen, bought, or received one of these already.
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(More storms predicted for today and tomorrow, and if anything exciting happens, I’ll return to my post as photojournalist for you then.)
Back in January I started eight new oil paintings of orange groves. I added a similar painting of oak trees with distant mountains (for the show Locals), and then someone wanted a painting of the groves with hills and mountains in a different size. That brought the total to ten paintings, all similar. Five are now completed (one sold), and other than the commissioned painting, there is no urgency or deadlines.
The urgency is self-imposed on the commissioned painting. As I prepped the canvas, I realized that I didn’t know which view of the mountains my customer was interested in. So I sent her these two photos (she is the photographer but I am the painter) and then put a thin layer of paint on the canvas (too boring to photograph).
Since my palette was loaded with the right colors and I had the biggish brush in hand, it seemed like a good time to begin layering paint on the 18×36″ that I was hoping to keep for awhile.
While slopping it on, I realized that maybe I want a different scene than the one I painted for myself last time. No rush; the space in my dining room is currently occupied by a painting of redwood trees.
Next, I moved to this 6×18″ with the blocks of groves that are confusing. I repainted the sky, distant mountains, and foothills.
The groves are confusing because I have not been following the photograph or the advice I give to my drawing students: “Draw the dog before you draw the fleas.”
This means figure out the larger parts before putting in the details. So, I covered over most of the lines of the groves, got out the photo, and started to pay attention. It isn’t that I have to follow photos because they are the only right way to paint; I have to follow them in order to understand how to make those blocks of trees look believable.
This feels like slow going, perhaps because it is. When I draw, a day flies by. When I paint, it crawls. Maybe someday with enough experience this will change. Meanwhile, tick, tock, tick, tock. . .is it lunchtime yet?
Here is the rest of your tour through Tulare County’s finest scenery, as interpreted in oil paint.
This was a commission, the very first time I painted a citrus grove with hills in the background.
In the Orchard (sold)
Tulare County’s Best (24×24″, available, $1000)
This was a thank you gift so it didn’t need a name.
Citrus Sunset (sold)
This was a commission.
Another commission. 
Citrus and the Sierra, 10×20″, oil on wrapped canvas, $350 (plus tax if you live in California)
P.S. I thought this piece was spoken for, but I didn’t put the size on it and the intended customer’s intended wall is not wide enough.