Layering in multiple painting sessions? Or pushing wet paint around in minimal painting sessions? Does it matter?
Sloppy startTexture on the distant forest. I just make this stuff up because real life is much too messy to duplicate.Trying to be careful with color and light placement means paying attention to detail instead of saying, “Oh well, I’ll catch it on the next layer.”
Sunny Sequoias #34, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, SOLD
No matter the method, the Sequoia Gigantea trees get painted convincingly on 6×6″ canvases, and eventually they will sell for $60 each (plus tax, because it cost a ton of money for California to pay for its wildfires.)
The other challenge is getting the photo/scan on screen to look the same as the painting looks in person. (WHERE ARE MY PEOPLE? I NEED PEOPLE FOR THIS!)
P.S. Today’s painting at Anne Lang’s Emporium
Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60
P.S. TODAY’S FEATURED ANNE LANG’S EMPORIUM PAINTING
Oak Grove Bridge XXV, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KATHRYN!! (It is today, yes. . .??)
I am a pencil artist. With the exception of portraits, I am able to draw almost anything in a manner which pleases both me and my customers. I love to draw.
Oil painting is much more difficult for me to achieve the results I want. I could quit a painting at almost any stage, and my paintings would fit someone’s idea of a decent piece of artwork. But I think my customers, collectors, friends and blog readers expect a certain level from me.
(Art is so subjective – good, bad, mediocre, genius, or why bother?. . . “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.)
I prefer realism, combined with great light, accurate details, attractive colors (as opposed to repellant ones) and believability. No big deal, eh?
Sometimes I start a painting with heavier paint and a deluded notion that I will be able to finish the painting in one session. Later I end up seeing missed spots, weird colors, and ways to make it better, so it ALWAYS takes at least one more session. This approach only works on forgiving subjects, so I don’t try to copy the photo, but just use it for guidance.
Other times I decide that there is no rush, multiple layering is the best way to paint, I will take as much time and as many layers as necessary to turn the painting into something that I am happy to sign. Depending on the subject, the calendar, and the number of paintings in progress, this approach takes 4-8 layers. (EIGHT?? I MIGHT DIE OF Git-‘er-dun by then.)
There are other ways to approach oil painting – plein air (standing outside in the shifting shadows and sneaky sunlight with bugs chewing on me and wind threatening to topple the easel), palette knife (thick clumps of paint smeared on with a palette knife as if one does not have access to brushes, for Pete’s sake, WHY?), and those are just the ones I can pull off the top of my noggin.
WHERE ARE MY PENCILS?? I NEED TO DRAW.
Stop it. There are 2 oil paintings of Giant Sequoias to paint, so you need to stay at the easels and focus, you doofus Central California artist.
Sometimes I have to parent myself this way.
P.S. Anne Lang will be closing her Emporium in Three Rivers on Dec. 31. She has 12 of my oil paintings. As a way to encourage you to visit her place (this is the LAST week of the deli – you MUST go have a turkey melt!), I will be posting one of those paintings per day while she is still open.
Kaweah Post Office XIII, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×10″, $125
One layer at a time, with oil paint on canvas, a 6×18″ canvas to be specific. Canvases this size and shape have become popular; they seem to fit well into odd spaces for people. I can accommodate this.
This is how Crescent Meadow in Sequoia National Park looked about 2 weeks ago.
Crescent Meadow
The proportions are different in this photo than on a 6×18″ canvas. Can I squish this into a horizontal format? Can I stretch it out and remain believable? Sure. This is a forgiving subject, not an architectural exactitude where I have to artificially elongate things, maybe shorten the height and add a few windows. That would be neither forgiving nor believable.
This messy and sort of ugly beginning lets me know this will work.Tucker doesn’t care, because there is something much more intriguing up the hill.All this discussion about proportion, believability and elongating has put Scout to sleep.Better sky (it is the farthest element), next grayish green on the trees that are farthest away.Those distant grasses come next.More trees, both near and far. Closer trees on the left.Closer trees on the right, bright yellow ones last.
After this is dry, I will look at it with more critical eyes, add a few more details, decide if the colors are really correct, and then sign it.
And honestly, Dear Readers, my paintings look a ton better in person.
I can’t find the photo that I used to paint any of these, so I have to rely on my experience of painting Sequoia trees to just improve the painting.
Here it is wet on the easel; is it improved? I think so. Will SS? I like it much better. The questions are still unanswered, but the painting is now finished (until someone else brings it to me from another antique store in another 10 years?)
Sequoia trees are one of my biggest subjects to paint. Well, duh, they are the biggest trees in the world. But that’s not what I mean – I paint Sequoias over and over and over.
A few weeks ago a girl whom I will call SS called to say she found a Sequoia oil painting by me at an antique store. (Here in Tulare County, “antique store” can sometimes be a euphemism for “junk store”, or if you are a bit more refined, a “thrift shop”; only the truly hip think of “repurposing outlet”, and probably no one in Tulare County.) SS just wanted to know if it truly was mine, if it had been altered in any way, and what I thought.
She read me the inventory # on the back, and I found it in my extensive files of oil painting photos.
Sunny Sequoias IXX, 8×10″, sold
First thought: ‘How embarrassing!” Second thought: “I paint better now, so may I borrow it back and improve it?”
I spent too much time trying to find the photo I used to paint this, but it has vanished. Why?? Where?? Who knows?
As I was composing this blog post, I discovered that in my extensive photo records, I have the wrong title on the photo. The painting is this one:
Sunny Sequoias XI, 8×10″, sold (twice)
Or is it??
This is what SS brought to me:
It’s not the same either! When did I paint this? Where is the photo? Did I decide that after using it 3 times, it was time to retire the photo? Did I lend it to someone? What happened to the photo of the painting?
The inventory # on the back does not match the inventory # in the files of photos! And, it was a paint-over from another oil painting that did not meet my standards. The edges were not painted because I framed it. I never frame them any more and haven’t for years.
“Years”, she says, as if she’s been painting for decades instead of since March 8, 2006.
Do you remember being required to say that when you were done with dinner as a kid? (We might not have had to say “please”. . . it isn’t sounding familiar to me, but with that degree of rudeness, why was permission even required? Never mind.)
The Redwood & Dogwood painting might be finished.
The Oak Grove Bridge might be finished.
Please, may I be excused?
Today’s painting for sale:
Sunny Sequoias XXX, 6×6″, oil on wrapped canvas, $60 plus California sales tax of 8% (you may do the math for us)
Do you think it is “sellsy” and push to show you a painting for sale at the end of each blog post? That’s the last thing I want to be! (or maybe being sellsy and pushy would be better than being rude and not asking politely to be excused from the table. . .)
After a quick start on the redwood and dogwood painting (redwoods are Sequoia Giganteas, Sequoia being the source of the name for Sequoia National Park), it was time to do my usual slow, careful, meticulous, thoughtful detailing. (Is this painting better or painting the same as I always do??)
Branches firstBlooms and leaves.More blooms and leaves.More blooms and more leaves.“Wow, you humans sure are mysterious.” Is this what Tucker is thinking, or is he wondering if there will be treats soon?Even more blooms and more leaves, along with more layers and detailing on the Sequoia.And more branches.“This is so boring I fell asleep.”More leaves on the branches.Feels done, but absolutely will need more refining and detailing and brightening and edge-sharpening before I sign it and paint the edges.
Want to buy this painting?? You may. It is 12×16″, $300 plus California sales tax of 8%, one of the highest tax rates in the nation.
After a recent trip to Sequoia National Park to see the dogwood in bloom, I had a desire to paint them with a redwood tree in the background. The printed photos hadn’t yet arrived, so why not paint while looking at the computer screen? Then I began thinking about my “Paint Better” and “Sell More Paintings” goals, squishy at best, definitely not “SMART”. The idea of “Paint Better” is so vague; maybe it could mean to paint looser, just get the idea of colors, shapes, darks and lights. Maybe this would work with dogwood and redwood.
Maybe this will work. The redwood has to dry before the dogwood can go on the top. Otherwise, it might look like mudwood.
Painting of the day:
Sunny Sequoias #33, oil on wrapped canvas, 11×14″, $275.
The three small redwood oil paintings are completed and for sale at Anne Lang’s Emporium in Three Rivers (or you can contact me directly.)
Sunny Sequoias XXX, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus taxSunny Sequoias XXXI, oil on wrapped canvas, 8×8″, $100 plus taxSunny Sequoias XXXII, oil on wrapped canvas, 6×6″, $60 plus tax
But wait! There’s more (in progress). This is 11×14″. The canvas began with a portrait of a stranger in a workshop; it was too hard for me, I didn’t know the person, I have no plans to become a portrait artist, so bye-bye, Stranger Face.
Maybe this will work. The redwood has to dry before the dogwood can go on the top. Otherwise, it might look like mudwood. 
