In the middle of a day of painting, I took a short walk.
Last year at this time, we were preparing for a wedding. I spent a fair amount of time preparing the yard where the wedding was to take place. This year I revisited the site, and the cows remembered me. When they saw I was weeding a little bit, they came to the fence to ask for treats.
These are some of the weeds I pulled to feed the beeves. They could also be considered wildflowers
This one was the most assertive.
Since it was a workday, I didn’t linger, but I did enjoy more wildflowers on the stroll back to the easels.
Redbud is actually pink, or magenta, or purplish pink, not red.
It’s kind of hard to focus on painting when this is outside the door.
Apparently, I’m not the only creature to appreciate spring in Three Rivers.
This little herd is just one body short of a baseball team. It looks as if this is a deer park, rather than my lawn. Actually, it isn’t even a lawn; we stopped watering it a decade or more ago. Water costs too much here. I love it green, but I’d have to work more and sell more instead of staring at the deer if I wanted to keep it like this through the summer.
Besides, lawn mowers will be outlawed in California in 2025. . . we don’t want to wear ours out if there can be no replacing it. (California is a special kind of stupid.)
We’ll look at the oil painting aspect of my life in the next post.
We had a beautiful spring day before spring arrived. Instead of being out enjoying spring, I was inside painting a picture of spring.
First, I varnished four newly dried paintings.
It was definitely an open-door sort of day.
The view was distracting, but I needed to be focused on the scene on the easel.
This is what remains: details on the distant trees and shrubs; lower section of rock, grasses behind left-side lupine; MORE WILDFLOWERS!
Sigh. I’d like to be out on the trail instead of in the painting workshop. However, the foot trouble has a good side because it keeps me planted in front of the easels when I have many paintings to finish of Tulare County’s prettiest places.
Spring is here in our world of Three Rivers, and it is almost here on the calendar.
There is a place near me here in Tulare County that is fantastical for spring-time hiking, particularly in a wet year. The views, green, trees, flowing water, and wildflowers are utter perfection, unless you try to get a good photo. Then, all the beautiful things that you remember end up in different pictures.
What’s an artist to do? Why, use Photoshop Junior, of course! (My attempt is a mess, so I am not going to show you. . . something about watching sausage being made comes to mind here. . .)
I started with the sky, of course, and then began on the most distant hills.
Because the photos are on my laptop, I can make specific areas as large as necessary to pick out the various textures and colors.
I moved across from left to right on those distant hills, and then I decided that the lupine were calling my name.
The final step at the end of the painting session used up various greens on the palette.
I love walking up there. Nope, I’m not giving the location. It really frosts me when people publicize nice quiet local places all over the interwebs and then there is traffic, a parking problem, and too many people. Tell your friends if you want, but WHY do you have to tell the WHOLE WORLD??
The painting isn’t any one exact location up there. This is the way I want to remember the place.
I might want to keep this painting. That has been happening lately; I’ll take it as a good sign.
Spring is exceedingly short, a beautiful season that could be cut off by a quick few days of heat. Last week in one of my regular posts of watching paint go slowly onto a canvas, I ended the post with a photo of my yard (“the yard”, “our yard”, the place outside of my home, oops, our home and my studio, etc.) and that photo received the comments. I think I can figure out what you, O Blog Reader, wants to see more than watching wet oil paint land on canvas.
Today we will have a spring fling thing.
These tiny blue flowers have the odd name of Speedwell, or Bird’s Eye Speedwell.
Baby-blue-eyes might be my favorite. You have to know where to look for them, and I do. Every year. They are earlier this year than usual.
These tiny bright spots should be called Magenta Maids, but the real name is Red Maids.
Looks like popcorn, but these are actually the bloom on Miner’s Lettuce.
Miner’s Lettuce and Fiddleneck are the earliest wildflowers in Three Rivers.
Last week Blog Reader Anne asked if I ever sit in the white chairs. Indeed I do, and Tucker often joins me.
But then Pippin butts in.
He’s kind of irresistible.
(Jackson isn’t very social nor is he loving or even friendly. He’s fine—Thanks for your concern.)
The flowers behind the white chairs have the unlovely name of “freeway daisies”. When the nursery owner showed them to me about 25 years ago, I said, “Those leaves are hideous so I bet they’ll do well in my yard.” The leaves without the flowers look sort of spiky, but the prolific flowers and easy propagation have overcome any objections on my part, although they do clash in color with the flowering quince. Since the deer don’t eat either of them and they bloom, I can handle a bit of color clashiness.
A few days ago, a dear friend tiptoed up to the front porch and left this incredible pot of tulips. They don’t grow well around here, so they are a HUGE floral treat.
They look electrified in the morning sun!
Just hanging around the tulips caused me to look for other things to photograph in the yard.
Yeppers, white daffodils.
This guy is early too. It is profuse in the pots by my studio all summer long.
Finally, I saw this freesia in my not-quite-awakened lawn (the one I let grow tall in the summer so Tucker and I can play hide-and-seek in the grass). How did it get there??
I love spring. LOVE IT!! Especially in Three Rivers.
February in Three Rivers is the beginning of springtime. Look at all the daffodils (and narcissus? Or are they all narcissus?) in my yard in these photos taken on February 14.
One bright February afternoon, I took a walk in Three Rivers with my friend in Texas. We were on the phone together for the entire 3.5 miles, catching up on many topics, and sending photos back and forth. These are the pictures I sent to her (and a few extras).
I love February in Three Rivers, so I walked a route that I haven’t walked in a long time, wanting to test my foot and my ability to endure discomfort. There were plenty of things to distract me, such as stealing a tangerine, dodging traffic, and taking photos.
Looking downstreamLooking upstream
This is an area where I hope to bring a couple of artist friends so we can paint (and maybe swat bugs) together.
A friend said she cannot see the elephant on Alta Peak, so I took this photo and outlined its image in hopes that the elephant shows for her.
I take the same photos over and over, always hoping that I will discover a familiar subject in better light or find another angle in order to make an irresistible painting someday.
P.S. In case you were wondering, 3.5 miles, foot discomfort tolerable, and I figured I could have gone another 1-2 miles without actively looking for a hatchet.
What passes for winter in Three Rivers is probably what many parts of the country regard as springtime. When we get rain, we get green.
This is greenery when I am walking, but probably just weeds to the property owner.
Moss is boss.
More moss!
The buckeye trees are leafing out.
We get flowers too.
The neighbor’s narcissus.
My paperwhites.This many are so very fragrant.
And, we get lichen. Well, we already had that, but I’m on a roll here, taking photos while walking.
An old friend told me she was envious that I get to live in Three Rivers. In order to help her feel better, I told her this:
“There are elements of 3R that aren’t so great, such as frequent power outages (more frequent than towns down the hill), smoke in the fall, evacuations during wildfires, unreliable and spotty cell service, phone and internet outages, occasional water outages, no dentist, no drug store, expensive groceries, only 3 churches to choose from, shrinking population, Park closures that adversely affect commerce, limited commercial choices (is this a bad thing?).”
When Kaweah Arts closed in early January for a couple of months, I retrieved all my paintings. Kaweah Arts sold well for me in its three year span despite serious hardships: a plague, a fire, another fire, and a flood, each one leading to the closure of Sequoia National Park, which meant the flow of visitors to Three Rivers ceased. I went through my records of sales, and came up with a list of sizes and subjects that sold the best.
The average price was $145, and the most popular subject was sequoia trees, Sequoia gigantea, AKA redwoods (the common name) or “big trees” (local vernacular). Two other popular subjects were mountain range views and poppies.
I gathered seven blank canvases from 8×8″ ($100) up to 6×18″ ($165) and then went to my oh-so-lovely newly organized photo files. The efficiency. . .!
After pairing the photos with the right canvases, I then did some preliminary sketching. This isn’t something I normally do, but in the interest of painting quickly, this seemed like a prudent move. (Remember, I also need to produce 20-30 larger paintings for the solo show in October AND paint for the Silver City Store, which sells well for me in the summers when Mineral King is open to the public.)
Next, I did the boring tasks of assigning inventory numbers, and putting the hanging hardware on the back. (This is the sort of task that makes me wish I had an apprentice or an intern.)
All-righty, then! Let’s start with the assembly line style painting of the first layer to establish where colors will go and to cover the canvas.
Painting back to front means starting with the sky. The order of colors and placements doesn’t really matter at this stage, but it is wise to practice good habits whenever possible.
Green next, just using whatever is on the palette, but occasionally making dark/light adjustments.
Browns and oranges, same color family, plus yellow.
Looks like seven little messes that vaguely suggest what they will become, but with almost 18 years of oil painting, this is no longer alarming to me.
I hope you are not alarmed either. This is the most efficient way I know to paint, and these seven paintings will be finished, signed, dry, varnished, and scanned by the time Kaweah Arts reopens in March.
It’s all part of the business of art. (Just in case the Art World is checking in and judging my use of photos, let me explain that I took great care in composing those photos and have taken great care in cropping, blending, adjusting, and arranging the parts of each one of these paintings. So There, because working from photos is not wrong.)
