Earth Day Celebration!

Today is Earth Day -- 22 April 2017. I'm glad this tradition has found an ongoing place for people to reflect on what we need to do to save the planet...and ourselves.

Every Earth Day, our little town has a celebration in the town's community center, with arts and crafts vendors, displays and info from environmental groups, music, face-painting and other fun and educational stuff. I decided I would do a little experiment and paint a bunch of little landscapes (6" x 6"/15cm x 15cm; and 4" x 4"/10cm x 10cm) and sell them with mini easels so they would be considered tabletop art instead of wall art (a common excuse is: we're out of wall space, no place to hang more art). And they would be very low-priced -- $25 for the 4x4s, $45 for the 6x6s.

This was how my setup looked at opening time:

As you can see, I brought along a few framed wall-art pieces, too. Here are images of what the miniature paintings look like:

6" x 6"

4" x 4"

Thankfully, the fee for showing was not very high -- selling just one 4x4 would cover that. Turns out -- I sold TWO 4x4s.

Another artist friend and I agreed -- this is why we don't like doing art shows anymore. Doing them can be quite expensive, one works one's rectum off getting ready, the artist can go through a lot of exhausting work just setting up and tearing down -- and the return for all this may well be zero or close to it.

So -- for whatever reason, these types of venues just don't work for me. I really don't understand why, and I don't feel like wasting the time or money on trying to figure out why.


www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com
 

Note-able News

I just got over a cold that seems to be quite, uh, "popular" these days -- seems like EVERYone's got it!

But before I contracted the pestilence, I did manage to produce and deliver a set of 5" x 3" / 12.5cm x 7.5cm note cards to the Joshua Tree National Park Association that are now being offered in at least one of the Park's visitor centers. The cards feature an image of one of my paintings, Sentinels, include an envelope and are currently selling for $3.95 each. One of the park rangers informed me the cards are selling well!

The image features a painting I made in the early 1990s. This is a typical iconic view of what the Mojave desert portion of the Park looks like...I figured this might go over well with visitors to the park.

This is the display rack that holds my note cards in the Visitor Center in Twentynine Palms. For now, it's nestled among jars of scented candles!

















I think -- but I'm not sure -- that all of the visitors centers will have the note cards available. That would be nice -- Park visitation has been increasing over the years, and the peak have just arrived with the profusion of desert wildflowers thanks to the generous rainfall we've received over the last few months!

GREAT news!!

Mark Junge
 
www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

What to Do, How to Do It

Whenever I start thinking about making money with art, I sometimes consider other styles I could pursue that may be more saleable in southern California while continuing with the ultra-traditional look I really love -- but painting those works for myself.

California impressionism is big in the Los Angeles area. Or: I could try a more abstract version of the desert scenes I love.

Then again, I've always liked the traditional Chinese watercolors of the huge mountains and forests, while somewhere in the view is a tiny human and/or shack, dwarfed by the magnificent scenery surrounding him or her.

I made some mockups of a painting I made years ago to see how it might look if painted in these other styles. My photo-editing software couldn't replicate the look I would create, especially as a Chinese watercolor. So I included an image of an actual watercolor that I would attempt to do as a desert landscape. ☺

Sentinels in Various Computer-Generated Styles

Example of the Real Deal!

I haven't even mentioned the possibility of doing desert scenery as a surrealism image!

So -- which look would YOU most like seeing on your wall??


www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

Show at Old Town Gallery & Gifts, Yucca Valley, CA

I have a show going on at Old Town Gallery & Gifts in Yucca Valley, CA. (Their website is here).

The reception was on Sunday, April 17th. The show ends on May13th -- just a few weeks from now! So, this would be a good time to run over there and see what you may want to add to your art collection!
 

This is a view of my paintings as one would face to the east. Mostly desert subjects, but not all of them.







  

And this is the view looking toward the west...or northwest, actually.









The three "Under $300" paintings. (They're 11" x 14" and are priced at $175 each).

So -- this is my first local showing in years. A lot depends on how well things go at Old Town Gallery & Gifts before I decide about future shows, although I already have something lined up for June, 2016 in the nearby town of Joshua Tree.

Let's hope!!

ANOTHER Little Desert Painting

I finished another little desert painting for my "Under $300" series of works -- possibly the last for a while, until I see how well received they are by the art collectors out there!

No title yet, really, so I'm just calling it Joshua Tree 03. The size is 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm. Obviously (I think!), I wanted to draw attention to the almost-a-silhouette of the Joshua tree against the bright clouds.

I'll be adding this to my website soon, and I expect it will be available in one of the local businesses by mid-April. More on this later.

It will be Easter in a couple of days. Happy Easter!

 

Three Little Paintings

I've been working on some small (8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm) paintings in the "Under $300" category. All desert scenes, of course.

Joshua Trees 01

Joshua Trees 02

Sand Verbena

These, along with future paintings yet to be made, will be available at one of the local businesses where tourists and desert lovers will go and, perhaps, pick up one or more as a suitcase-sized souvenir. Check my website for more information on availability:

 www.SouthwestSpaces.com
 www.MarkJunge.com

 

Where the Sun Sets

Where the Sun Sets -- the latest in my "Art Under $300" series!

Where the Sun Sets                                        11" x 14"

The sun sets in the West, of course, and it actually sets further west than in Joshua Tree National Park (the sun sinks into the Pacific Ocean, as we all know!)

But as a fan of western movies, I've seen enough movie endings in which the hero rides off into the sunset; in fact, it's somewhat of a cliché. And as a fan of the desert, where better to depict a sunset than in the beauty of those vast spaces of the Southwestern desert?

This painting will be available for purchase later in the first week of February 2015 -- I still need to finish the coat of varnish and then give it adequate time to dry and harden. My website (and the specific page on which this artwork appears) is HERE.

Enjoy!

 

Dawn

Dawn is the latest in my series of "Under $300" paintings that I hope to have up on my website (SouthwestSpaces.com) in a week or so.

Dawn                                      11" x 14"

It's rare that I get out of bed in the predawn hours; however, I wanted to be in Joshua Tree National Park to catch those first rays of sunlight streaming across the landscape. So -- I did it! I drove out there in December, 2014 close to winter solstice, when sunrise would be as late into the morning as it could get! (I'm such a night person!) It's nice to be only about 15 minutes from the Park.

No flowers at that time of year, and thankfully, it wasn't especially cold, either. (It WAS cold and cloudy  on the same day in 2015 -- I'm glad I aimed for the previous year!) Just the rock formations that climbers love to climb on, some desert scrub and those cool Joshua trees.

I've been trying to decide if I want to continue painting nothing but Joshua tree artworks, or if I need to vary my subject somewhat. If I could be more efficient with my time, I could do these much faster and not really have to make a choice!

But getting up before dawn would NOT help. ☺

 

Joshua Tree!

Joshua Tree! is the latest in my "Art-on-a-Budget" series -- small paintings that I will offer for $200 USD or less.

As you can see, it's clump of Joshua trees with one of those highly-climbable rock formations that Joshua Tree National Park is known for.

Joshua Tree!      14" x 11" / 36cm x 28cm

In a sense, this is a "historical" painting. The tallest tree in the middle has long since toppled over and died, leaving only the surrounding suckers. This area is now a parking lot with the suckers and some of the small vegetation preserved in an opening in the pavement. The famous Intersection Rock is over to the left, out of the view of the scene which is the entry to the Hidden Valley campground.

The yellow-flowering shrubs are goldenbush (Ericameria linearifolia). Maybe it's my imagination, but they don't seem to be as numerous in the Park as they used to be.

I've painted this spot many times, although no two are the same. It seems to be one of my favorite views in the National Park, and I expect there will be more variations on this theme in the future!
 

Things I've Learned at the Art Show

The art show last weekend came and went ... and NO SALES AT ALL!!! Grr-r-r-r...

I wasn't the only one. Other artists had no sales, or they sold only small, inexpensive sculptures or prints of paintings.

In spite my initial frustration and anger about how it all turned out, I think I picked up on a few things that may help me move ahead.

-- There is no "economic recovery." It's a lie the politicians -- especially the US president -- keep telling us. People liked my work, but I have to offer it more inexpensively.

-- All of the artwork at the show was realism -- no abstract, impressionism or other styles that seem to be more popular in southern California. (However, I was the only "pure" landscape painter -- everybody else had wildlife prominently featured in their works). So there may be hope in continuing to work in my favored style. 
Art shows just don't seem to work for me anymore. They haven't for a long time. And another artist told me many of the galleries in Scottsdale, AZ are closed up -- couldn't make it. This tells me to skip the art shows and to be REALLY careful with galleries -- they will not be my savior. I'll have to decide if I want to approach them at all at this time.

-- All of the paintings I showed received a positive response. I'll continue with desert paintings, but I'll definitely add more other kinds of western landscapes, especially Colorado mountain scenes, with or without ruins of 19th century mines. These two pieces seemed to be the crowds' favorites:




Badlands, 18" x 24" / 46cm x 61cm

Springtime Ocotillo, 8" x 10" / 20cm x 25cm










So I'll be painting more ocotillos, desert mountains and flowers! And for the local market, I'll be painting Joshua trees with those fantastic monzogranite rock formations, too.


To make these paintings more affordable, I'll have to pass on doing the time-consuming, transparent glazing that I love. It gives the works a stained-glass luminence, but it does take more time to do. So the glazed paintings will be for galleries, a few rare selected shows or for me to keep! I'll offer the "art-on-a-budget" paintings on my website (SouthwestSpaces.com or MarkJunge.com) and to local merchants/galleries who may get tourists.customers who want memories of our beautiful Joshua Tree National Park.

Does this sound like a sound plan? I hope so!! At this point and in this economy, art is all I have. Maybe with the things I learned at the art show, I can still make it!

 

Visions of the Night

As you may know, a "nocturne" is a work of art or music that is all about the night -- typically, night with a full moon.

It's amazing how magical nocturnes are! Provided a landscape feels like a safe place to be in, the darkness + moonlight casts a spell as nothing else can.

I've painted less than a handful of nocturnes only because they can be too dark for people to hang on their walls, especially if rooms are not brightly lit during the evening hours. But I suspect I may do more of them -- possibly scenes that are not desert. I absolutely love the look the full moon gives to the land, as it has been the last few nights during the "supermoon." (Full moon was last night, but it's still lookin' pretty darned wonderful out there!)

Mojave Nocturne

In these two images, you can see I sometimes make the night sky quite blue; other times, I tone it down quite a bit. We don't see much, if any, color when the light levels drop too low. We may think everything looks blue, but it's mostly shades of gray. (The sky MAY have a little blue in it).

What's amazing to me are the color photos (35mm slides) I've taken by moonlight. Given enough exposure, the pictures look just like daylight pix! The relative values, darks and lights in a moonlight scene are the same as they are in daylight -- things are simply darker.

AND -- just a couple of other differences:

1. The brightest stars show up in the nighttime photos;
2. Shadows have blurry edges. The moon moves enough during the time exposures to blur things.

Maybe someday soon!! More nocturnes!
 

Moonlit Desert

 

 

 

 

Wildlife Moments

My newest painting, Looking for Dinner -- Redtail Hawk, depicts what could become one of those nature documentary-types of moments... or it could be nothing at all!
 

Looking for Dinner -- Redtail Hawk               11" x 14"

In the air, we see a redtail hawk sailing effortlessly over the Mojave desert, making one last pass for tasty goodies before the sun sets -- coming close to what could his/her dinner. That cute little desert cottontail bunny-rabbit probably doesn't know about the hawk yet, but it's OK as long as it stays put. But if it hippity-hops into the open, it just may become a meal!

I won't reveal where the bunny is -- I hope you can see it. But I wanted to do a piece that tells a story -- as brief as it is. Prey-predator relationships. Life and (maybe) death in the surrealistic desert.

The setting is Joshua Tree National Park, with some of its namesake plants scattered about. The dominant tree is leaning toward the south -- unfortunately, Joshua trees have a bad habit of growing toward the sun. When they get bigger, they're off-balance, and in time will topple over. Not ALL JTs work out their self-destruction in this way, of course, but it isn't unusual to find places where all or most of the JTs have that characteristic lean.

The small mountain in the background has become one of my favorite geological features in the Park to paint. Most of the hills and formations in Joshua Tree National Park are unnamed officially -- often, the climbers come up with names that they share with each other, but the National Park Service never went around naming everything. So I just call this mountain "the peaks." I like all of the pointy projections for some reason. This paintings shows "the peaks" reasonably accurately (the peak on the far left is shorter than I've made it here).

The hawk is the sharpest item detail-wise and contrasts strongly with the lighted area of the peak behind it. It's also located at one of "golden mean" points of the composition. All this tends to make you look at it, although the JT in the foreground does some of that, too. The bunny, of course, blends into its background -- natural camouflage.

Wildlife moments. Kinda fun sometimes!

www.SouthwestSpaces.com
www.MarkJunge.com

 
 

End of Another Day

End of Another Day is my latest painting It features a view in Joshua Tree National Park in late afternoon. It's spring, but I de-emphasized the flowers and focused more on shapes and lighting.

End of Another Day                                 11" x 14"

This is the first piece I've done in a long time that doesn't include any wildlife -- not even a hawk in the sky. In my mind, there's a fine line between solitude and loneliness -- this time, I was leaning more toward the latter. Lots of space, everything is spread out, long shadows and only rock and plants -- no animals. I think a critter would have added something that people can relate to, and maybe then the viewer wouldn't feel quite so alone out there. (Of course, the critters are actually all around you, watching -- but you don't see them!)

I don't know if I succeeded -- if I didn't, well, not a huge issue. But if you look at this and sense that you may be the only form of animal life on the planet...then I pulled it off!

Enjoy.

Finding Light in the Desert

Finding light in the desert...well, OK, it's normally not hard to find light in the desert, of all places. But finding the right kind of light can be problematic.

One of the major blessings of living so close to Joshua Tree National Park -- a place I love to paint -- is being able to pop on over there any time I need to so I can be there when the time -- and the lighting -- is right.

Dawn

The above image is one of my prints that is available at FineArtAmerica.com. I went to the Park just before sunrise so I could be in a good spot to capture the rising sun along with some Joshua trees and the monzogranite rock formations that climbers love to scramble over.

For, you see, it isn't just any kind of light that I look for. Lighting changes so much during the day and in different seasons. Early-morning and pre-sunset light (my favorites) come from different directions, and summer lighting at those times comes from further north than winter lighting which is more from the south. As both a photographer and a painter (especially the latter), it helps to go to the Park knowing what kind of light to expect. And since I know the Park reasonably well, I often know where I need to go to take advantage of the light I'll find.

In fact, sometimes I develop an idea for a painting and then go to where I will find a locale to match. Sometimes I'll wait as long as six months to return to the site i want to photograph/paint because I know the lighting will be what I want to depict.

The photo above that I took will assist me in a painting I want to make, hopefully soon. Since I wanted to offer it as a print, too, and I don't have an ultra high-resolution camera that costs more than our house, I had to Photoshop it just a little -- I used a watercolor look which a.) makes it appear to be a watercolor painting, and 2.) hides the blurred edges that would show at larger magnifications since my camera is only an 8MP camera. And: I cheated and added the image of the red-tailed hawk in flight. Personally, I think the image turned out well.

In the end, both photography and painting work better when the artist chooses his/her lighting carefully. And if the artist lives close to a place that makes it quick and easy to get to a favorite spot when the lighting is fantastic, so much the better.

The Enchanted Realm

For desertophiles like me, most of the desert is an enchanted realm. But in this case, it's also the title I gave to my latest painting of Joshua Tree National Park in California.

The Enchanted Realm                                                                         18" x 24"

I was in this spot a couple of times (although I may not return -- the desert has a delicate layer of cryptobiotic soil -- "dirt" + microorganisms -- that is disturbed easily by hiking on it and that can take years to heal). The first time I was there, a neat cloud shadow spread across the land as you see it here.

I added some minor touches of my own, but I was so moved by the way nature painted this magical place, I felt it didn't need much help from me.

I use "The Vast Spaces of the Southwest" as my tagline. This scene is a perfect example of what I love about the desert and all of that distance that seems to touch infinity. It's a place where one can go and be in touch with the universe because we can see so much of it here. Not intergalactic space, obviously, but just -- big spaces and small us!

Some New Drawings of the Desert

I've been drawing more than painting lately in my efforts to produce artwork that should be affordable to almost anyone. Here are two of the latest batch of drawings:

Drawing the Desert

I mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to make some small colored-pencil drawings that I could sell for a much lower price than my paintings. At this point, I've made a little over 20 drawings, and hopefully I can do a few more before Saturday. I'll be attending a local craft fair, which will be somewhat of a marketing test for the drawings. We'll see if selling lots of inexpensive drawings is more do-able than selling a few, expensive paintings.

Here are a few examples of what I've been up to. Each is 8" x 10" (20cm x 25cm) sketched on colored paper. None are titled or framed.

Mojave Nocturne

Mojave Nocturne is the latest painting in my ongoing (never-ending?) series of desert paintings. The size is 14" x 11" / 35cm x 28cm, acrylic on panel:

 

It depicts Joshua Tree National Park at night as a full moon rises and shines through the clouds. I've always loved being in the desert under a full moon: the bare ground lights up more than grass or shrub-covered landscapes do, and the place takes on a special magic that must be experienced. And the Joshua trees appear as apparitions from a Halloween night, with many ghostly fingers and arms reaching out to grab you!

Still, in spite of those thoughts, the desert by moonlight isn't at all scary to me (unless one were to step on a rattlesnake in the darkness, but there are no snakes in this painting). The moon, the glowing clouds (when present) and the shapes against a starry sky have a beauty all their own.

Can you tell I love the desert?

Desert Paintings II -- Joshua Tree National Park

Last time, I began a short series of special desert places that I keep returning to because I love to make paintings of those places. This is Part II of a three-part series.

Joshua Tree National Park is a region I live close to and that I love to visit. So far, there's one site that I've painted many times over, although it has changed over the years.

(Sorry about the less-than-stellar quality -- these were scanned from slides, made before digital cameras were around!)

I always liked the "V" made by the Joshua tree on the left and the rock formation (I believe climbers call it "Eagle's Nest" or something like that) on the right. I usually paint clouds that repeat or add to the "V," and it didn't matter to me if the scene appears in daylight or under the magical glow of a full moon.

This is a much more recent -- and smaller -- version of this scene. Unfortunately, Joshua trees tend to grow toward the sun, resulting in imbalances that often cause the trees to fall over in time. All of the above paintings are based on photos I took, since the scene now looks like this:

This photograph of how the site looks today shows the changes: the Joshua tree (which has finished toppling over, and the suckers have grown longer) is surrounded by a parking lot complete with trash dumpsters.

I imagine I'll create more art based on this Joshua tree scene -- the way it used to look!

Mojave Sunset

Mojave Sunset is my newest painting. And it's already "sold"!

We needed to get a higher gas-mileage car for The Wiffee to commune to work in. The dealership was willing to accept a painting as part of the deal. So here it is!

Only in small-town America!