It was thrilling to see my art come off a printing press as notecards. It was exciting to sell them to stores, and the ideas started piling in.
After Tulare County Landmarks and Mineral King Scenes, it was time to move to the city: Visalia Landmarks was hugely popular in the stores, which are now all closed.
I just trotted all over Visalia with my camera, taking photos without giving it a second thought, never asking permission, just excited to be out gathering new material for pencil drawings to be turned into little packages of notecards. It was fun to think of what to draw, fun to photograph it, fun to learn about and write up a description for the back, fun to be on my own figuring out how to do these things.
This was all done in the days of film cameras with its accompanying wait for the pictures to be developed. During that era, the magical and mysterious fax machine appeared, and we had no idea of email, cell phones, digital photography, the internet with all its huge changes to our lives. Pencils (and erasers) were all I needed.
After the notecard set of Tulare County Landmarks began selling, the ideas began flowing. Mineral King was the next logical set, especially since I already had two drawings finished. Reruns, but I didn’t care and didn’t think anyone else did either.
This was the first time I drew the Oak Grove Bridge; this view is now too overgrown to photograph the bridge clearly.
All of these were from my own photos with the exception of the Mineral King Store. I don’t remember my family going to Mineral King until after the store had disappeared, so I used an old postcard without any regard or concern for copyright laws.
This is also the first time I drew the scene of Farewell Gap with the Crowley cabin. I had no idea how popular that would become or that I would draw and paint it so many more times (or any idea that I would become a painter).
Stay tuned. . . many more notecards ahead in this series!
This could also be called “Notecard Reminiscing” or even “Back in the Olden Days”.
Back in the olden days, I worked in a print shop and drew in pencil. Pencil drawings of Tulare County landmarks printed on notecards were my “side hustle”, now the cool way to refer to a second job. It was a hobby to make money, a business that I hoped would outpace my real job.
Because I have always been a note and letter writer, finding stationery and cards with local art was what I looked for any time I traveled. It came to my attention that there weren’t any for Tulare County in spite of the fact that we have Sequoia National Park, and that we feed the world. From my viewpoint in Ivanhoe, then Visalia, and eventually Lemon Cove, it seemed that we had subjects that were good enough to be proud of and drawn. At that time I was only capable of drawing architectural subjects, so that is all I thought of. (Looking back at my work, I’d now say I was barely capable of such things, but growth is good, unless you are a tumor.)
In the past year or so, I pulled the original drawing of the Lemon Cove Women’s Club out of its frame to touch it up. It isn’t too embarrassing, but it did benefit from some tightening up. This was a drawing I just didn’t want to let go of, so it hangs in my dining room.
The original of the Silver City Store also hangs in my dining room.
This one I now use as an example for my drawing students so they can feel better about their own beginning work.
This was back in 1987, and I knew nothing about branding oneself (yikes, as if we are cattle?) or marketing. I loved to draw, and felt lucky to be able to work in a print shop and know people who helped me figure out how to make my idea happen, along with people who owned shops that wanted to sell my merchandise.
There was a distant foggy hope that someday I could be self-employed as an artist, but that was far off in the future, along with having a real studio, owning a home, and being old like a real grown up.
A former drawing student, now a long time friend who lives far away, ordered many notecard packages from my website (you can do that too – this is The Notecard Page.)
She asked if I had anything of Kings Canyon, or perhaps Hume Lake. Nothing. I’ve got nothing. Even the General Grant Tree has finally sold out.
This sent me to my photographs, in search of something to redraw, or maybe even something new. It also caused me to dig around to find the old drawings of Kings Canyon.
Kings Canyon Overlook, drawn in 2001 for one of the last variety set of notecards. It’s not embarrassing, even 19 years later.This is a small part of a larger collage drawing, and I like the addition of the yucca in bloom.The collage was a commissioned drawing of highlights from both Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks.
The overlook is the winner for a Kings Canyon drawing to be made into notecards. It isn’t part of Kings Canyon National Park, just part of the geographical area called Kings Canyon. But since I am not doing this for The Park, it doesn’t matter.
Beginnings, looking at a mess of photos and a messed up print of the yucca version.
This is going quite fast, helped along by experience, combined with listening to Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, read by Tom Hanks. (I love our county library system.)
And if you are interested in buying notecards with this drawing on it, please let me know. If enough folks want them, I’ll order some. They’ll be the same as most of my cards – 4-1/2 x 5-1/2″, 4 to a package for $8.
Because I already had 2 of these scenes drawn and the first set of Tulare County Landmarks notecards sold well, the natural second choice was Mineral King. (Big surprise, eh?)
This was the first time I drew my favorite bridge, and it is from a viewpoint that is now overgrown and no longer so clear.
I worked from my own photos with the exception of the old Mineral King Store; by the time my family went to Mineral King, it was gone.
Stay tuned – there are many more notecards to show you!
The customer allowed me to put color in the flag, a technique that I am very partial to. I added smoke, scanned it, and did the Photoshop clean-up.
As I was adding the grassy meadow to the foreground, I was thinking about the first time I drew the Hockett Meadow Ranger Station. It was part of a notecard set called “Backcountry Structures”.
Back in the olden days (in the 1980s), people used pens to handwrite notes in cursive, put them in envelopes, address them, LICK a stamp to put on the envelope, and then place into a real mailbox for people in other parts of the country to receive.
How quaint. Those were definitely kinder, gentler, slower, more personal times.
Now, hold onto your hats, Dear Blog Readers, because I am going to show you something frightening.
Your Central California artist needs to keep reminding herself that it is good to be humble.
Growth is good.
People were very kind in the olden days and hadn’t learned all that anonymous internet rude behavior yet.
The one who isn’t supposed to see the drawing doesn’t know about my blog, so we’re safe. (also true for the drawing shown on this post)
Working from photos I took before my customer was even born showed me the upper window with the shutter opened.On the table: I worked on this all day on First Saturday December in between visitors to the studio.Almost finished, except for all that grassy foreground to figure out first.
I put in the grass, thought it was finished, scanned it, did the Photoshop clean-up, emailed it to the customer, and then I remembered that he asked me to have smoke coming out of the chimney.
Well, oops.
Tomorrow I’ll show you the finished drawing, along with something that might drop your jaw.
This is my most recent pencil drawing commission. A group of friends are getting this for another friend. That’s all I’m allowed to say, not knowing the the scope of readership of this blog or degree of silence required for this gift.
Beginning stagesFirst scanned
This is the scanned, cleaned up version using Photoshop Junior, which is actually Photoshop Elements. It is converted to grayscale mode and anything that is paper color on the drawing gets “erased” so it looks almost as clean here as it does in person.
This is a longish story about a drawing student/friend.
Gina took drawing lessons from me in Exeter before I closed my studio there in December of 2001. She began a drawing, and then left lessons to return to school and become a nurse.
In about 2016, we listed some old roofing on Craig’sList (actually Cowboy Bert did it for us because we were not versed in that particular method of selling things), and someone named Gina answered the ad. We talked on the phone, and I gave her directions to our house.
When she and her husband arrived, Trail Guy went out to take care of the roofing transaction. He came into the house and said, “You need to come out here and meet these people”.
It was a happy reunion! Gina didn’t know where I had moved my studio or if I was teaching any more. She immediately said she wanted to return to lessons, because now as a nurse, her schedule is flexible.
Imagine my shock and awe when she returned to lessons and pulled out the very drawing that she had begun way back when!
Three years later, (or is it two? four? I didn’t write it down), Gina finished her drawing. It is possible that I am even more excited about this than she is!
Title ideas: Bob’s Borrowed Bike, When Dad Was Young, My Dad
When she began this drawing, we were both in our early 40s and could still see little things. Still, the rule is “no faces smaller than an egg” (and by now, I’m thinking ostrich egg). I discouraged her from drawing a face this small, but she is independent-minded and did an excellent job of capturing a likeness. This is her dad on a Harley.
Gina spent months researching Harleys, looking at each separate part of the motorcycle to get everything as accurate as possible. She spent weeks trying to discern what model of car that was. (It is a Kaiser, something we’d never heard of.) Together we spent years inching this drawing along, figuring out how to handle the various parts and textures.
Finally, finally, almost done, and then Gina decided to put clouds in the sky. She spent weeks looking at clouds, and each week she would announce, “I really don’t know clouds at all”, and all of us of a certain age would snicker.
The moment of completion.
But wait! There’s more! As Gina and I got to know each other, we learned that we both had been on the staff of Hume Lake Christian Camps in our late teens. I was in the mountains; she was in the foothills. I tossed or lost my staff photo decades ago, but as we have learned about Gina, she carefully preserves things. Recently, she sent me this, and WE WERE ON STAFF AT THE SAME TIME!
Nope, you won’t be able to spot us in this photo, purposely shown at a small size, so there.
P.S. Michael Smith-Jenson, I got your email. Thank you. I found you in this photo. I lost your email. I’m sorry. (I’m not nearly as careful or organized as Gina!)
