The Oak Grove Bridge on the Mineral King Road is my favorite subject to draw and paint, except when it isn’t.
I’ve been inching along on this painting for months. The angle is unusual, the details are hard to see, and the colors are somewhat difficult to discern, all of it making for tricky business.
However, I’m FINALLY getting close to finishing.
This is how it appeared when I began on this, the umpteenth day.Not sure where to begin, I charted out where the posts would go on the railing. I know there are 7 little ones between the larger ones, because I’ve done this a few (dozen) times.But what goes between those little posts? Some places it is the posts on the opposite side of the bridge, and some places it is the space beyond.Is this photo of the painting any more advanced than the previous one? Welcome to my world of the Treadmill Bridge Painting.Here I have begun to tighten up the edges on the horizontal pieces, using a yardstick while the painting is lying flat. (How do Real Artists do this?? How do plein air painters handle these challenges??)Time to begin the landscaping on the lower section.It’s growing. . .Too wet to continue. . . in the next painting session I will add lots of little green speckles in various shades.
When the little green speckles leaves are in place, I’ll sign it, photograph it, and call the lady who expressed an interest in this painting during the Redbud Festival.
Then I’ll move back to the collage commissioned oil painting of the Oak Grove Bridge with Homer’s Nose. That bridge will be a straightforward angle, no tricky business.
Today’s painting is a pencil drawing of another bridge, also associated with Mineral King:
Mineral King Bridge, pencil, matted and framed to approx. 12×16, $400
