Reluctant Portrait

About 20 years ago I decided to learn how to draw people that can be recognized. This was a business decision: I have a love for architecture, not faces. It was very difficult, but I did quite a few portraits.

Later, I decided that portraits are best left to those who don’t have to sweat bullets in capturing likenesses.

This fall, a portrait came back to haunt me. A man I don’t know emailed me to say I had drawn his dad, and now would I draw his mom.

The request came during a lull in custom jobs, and against my better judgement while ignoring my lack of expertise in this area, I said yes.

He sent me this photo of the drawing of his dad. 

He also sent me several somewhat blurry photos of his mom with a request to put her next to her beloved carved bear. I know this fine lady, and was determined to do a good job. Several of my drawing students also know her, so without telling them who it was, I took the drawing to lessons and showed them.

What a thrill when they said, “That’s [Her Name]!!” (This is the World Wide Web, so I am not publishing the name of the subject.)

Now, I am returning to my policy of no portraits. My students said, “The plaid blouse must have been difficult”. It was easier than her face.

I haven’t heard back, and I hope the family was pleased (and doesn’t have any more members to be pencilized.)

Christmas Cabin Surprise

A friend asked me to draw this cabin, another one that didn’t survive the wildfires. Her photos were fairly inadequate, but my confidence in making up things is growing. This is due to experience, both with cabins, and knowing that most people don’t observe detail to the degree that I do when drawing.

The front door of a place is the most important feature, and this one is hidden by the dual trees. I asked my friend if I could remove those trees and if she could describe the front door. She said yes to both.

When custom art jobs are tricky, meaning when there aren’t adequate photos, a sketch is often helpful.  This one has an unusual roof shape on the left gable end, and a surprisingly wide chimney, along with steps that were hidden behind the tree that I removed.

The sketch was approved, so I did the drawing. 

 

Winter Cabin

This cabin burned. I don’t know where it was or who owned it. The customer provided the photo and requested the drawing as a gift for the cabin owner. I haven’t heard the outcome. I feel fairly confident that the cabin owner won’t know about me or my blog.

P.S. If you recognize this cabin, shhhhh. It is meant to be a surprise.

Pre-Christmas Gift

Someone I have never met contacted me to draw a house I’ve never seen. When I received the photo, I marked it with colored circles, and sent an email asking for closer photos or descriptions of what each circle contained. 

The customer was very responsive, and sent helpful photos of each area. This was on a tight deadline, and silly me, I forgot to mention the rush charge. I also didn’t save the detail photos of each area of mystery, because space on my laptop is limited.

You can see that the photo was taken with a phone, using the built-in wide-angle lens. This distorts things – the verticals aren’t vertical, and distant things look farther away while closer things appear too big.

Time was fleeing quickly, so I just dove in. Often if I draw the parts I can see and understand, then the other parts aren’t so daunting and can be faked somewhat.

Thanks to great communication with the customer, I was able to finish the drawing well ahead of the requested date and also get good instructions about the parts that the original photo didn’t explain.

P.S. I love to draw!

New Cards Available

Now available in sets of 4 notecards, 4-1/4 x 5-1/2″, blank inside, with envelopes,$8

Just in case you want something new to add to your gift baskets, stockings, or to encourage yourself to write notes to people, here are some cards that you may have seen as original art, but not as cards. They are available from my website, by putting a check in the mail, by emailing me for further instructions, or perhaps if we run into each other at the Post Office (unless I can’t recognize or understand you because you are wearing a mask).

Clicking on the name beneath each card picture will take you to the appropriate page of my website.

Oak Grove Bridge #28

Pear Lake Ski Hut

Hockett Meadow Ranger Station

Yokohl Oak

Custom Dogs

Many artists get their start in custom work by drawing or paintings people’s pets. My start came with architecture, specifically cabins. “Cabinart” – get it? 

Occasionally I get commissioned to draw or paint people’s pets, more dogs than cats. Here is the most recent, shown here today because I feel fairly confident that the intended recipient doesn’t know about me or this blog.

Just for curiosity’s sake, have a look at a few previous custom dog drawings:

In case you are wondering, here is information about custom dog drawings (cats too):

  1. Being eye-level with the animal makes for better photos than looking down at them. Notice the difference between the top drawing and the lower three.
  2. Black animals are extremely hard to photograph and thus to draw; seeing details is almost impossible.
  3. Clothing on animals is just weird; I have no earthly idea what the various parts and pieces of clothing are on the top drawing, and the less I understand what I am seeing, the more difficult it is to draw it.
  4. Usually people want little lap dogs of undetermined ancestry, the type of dog that makes me want to scream while standing on a chair. I manage to keep my panic at bay while armed with pencils. (German Shepherds, Australian Shepherds and yellow Labradors are more my style, although cats will always be my preference.)
  5. There is still time to have your pet drawn, but there will be a rush charge.

Rush Drawing Commission

The custom art jobs are slowly getting completed. Many of them cannot be shown, because the recipients might be readers of this blog. Can’t be giving away secrets like that just before Christmas!

This is a drawing that the recipient has already received. It began with some sketches.

The customer didn’t want these subjects shown this way. (Why did they – customer and assistant – send me these photos to work from??)

I tried again from the photos they specified out of the batches they had sent to me. (Often multiple photos help me see details that might be obstructed by shade or trees or trash cans or cars or. . .)

This was accepted, but the customer requested that the upper left image not be on a tilt.

It was a rush job, so I spent all day on a Saturday and a few hours on Sunday completing the drawing.

The upper right scene was drawn from another rush job for the same customer several years ago.

P.S. This was a very challenging job, causing me to rethink my custom prices and available sizes for collages. I know for sure now that 9×12″ is too small for this amount of detail (BRICKS – oy vey!)

Three Delivered Pencil Drawings

A thoughtful and generous man hired me to draw 5 cabins for 5 different friends who lost them in the wildfires. He asked me to not put them on the blog, because they were to be surprises. He must think that I have a larger readership than I do; on the other hand, this is Tulare County, where there aren’t 6 degrees of separation – it is more like 1-1/2.

Three of the drawings have been delivered. The customer sent me photos of the recipients, but because this is the World Wide Web, I’ll just show you the cabin drawings without the recipients (even though some are wearing masks). 

One Done, Another Begun

Phew! We got this one. The customer is happy and I am too! This is the scanned view so you can better see the details. Actually, I feel a bit proud of being able to combine all these different pictures into one GIANT collage, one that pleases both the customer and me. I might need a nap now.

But no! No naps for this artist. I have begun the next commissioned pencil drawing of a cabin. This one will be a gift (not from me but from the customer to his friend) so I won’t say much more about it for now.

Adjusting and Advancing

I did it again – worked with a customer until she was happy with the sketch, and then after doing the drawing (well, not completely finishing), she wasn’t entirely happy with the results.

This is my fault because when I saw there was a problem, I made an unauthorized change to try to fix it. Instead, I should have gone to her first and said, “I think there is a balance problem here”. But if I had said that and she liked it, would she have felt stupid? It is a good policy to never lead a customer into feeling stupid. 

She made a suggestion, I countered it by proposing an additional adjustment, and then I warned her that erasing may leave a shadow. She was okay with that, so I feel good about our combined decision. 

Here is the before:

This is the after:

 I am once again awaiting her approval in case there are more adjustments. More will be revealed in the fullness of time.