It has been well over a year since I began this weblog, and perhaps you are new to it. If so, I can’t assume you are interested enough in me to go back to the beginning and figure out who I am or where I have been. (Okay, I can assume it, but you may have seen the word “assume” divided into its parts “ass” + “U” + “me”!)
This is what I look like when speaking to a crowd. The bangs are sort of new because my friend S and I decided I was aging disgracefully and that bangs are The Answer. They do hide the “11” on my forehead!
This is the studio at home where I draw, and it is open by appointment. I paint in another building to the right (much less photographic) because oil paint is just too messy to have around my drawing space.
For years I have drawn people’s homes for them using pencil. In addition, I have drawn the landscape of Tulare County, particularly Sequoia National Park.
Now, at the risk of making a donkey of myself, I will assume that you are as busy as I am and don’t want to read all this stuff in one sitting! Thus, to be continued. . .
His name was John
I never had the pleasure of meeting him although we lived in the same small town. He died last year, and his Mom asked me to draw him with his dogs. This sort of commission is difficult for 2 reasons: 1. The sadness 2. Without having known him, it is hard to tell if the drawing captures a likeness.
New Apple, Old Lemon
This title isn’t the description of a good computer and a bad car; it is the title of a terrific colored pencil drawing by one of my drawing students! Look at this:
Char has been drawing with me for 3 (or 4 or 5? time flies!) years. She works in graphite, and has a unique way of finding photos and then using bits and pieces to make the design her own. As she draws during lessons, she listens to those around her learning to work in colored pencil. The amount of pencils, the cost of those pencils, the decisions required to select the correct pencil – it all added up to a conclusion that colored pencil is too much trouble. Then, we got talking about using just the primaries as I do in oil painting. We discussed doing colored pencil drawings with just a box of 12 pencils. Char was interested and ordered a box of Faber-Castell Polychromos, a very fine brand. We talked about the color wheel; I showed her some techniques and we did some color matching. I recommended a subject that had as few colors as possible, and this drawing is CHAR’S VERY FIRST COLORED PENCIL PIECE!! It is true! Isn’t this wonderful??
Growth, part five (Facing Faces)
After about 9 years and on the fourth address for cabinart, it became apparent that notecards were fading fast, and the local market for house and cabin commissioned drawings was getting saturated. The next step? Portraits! I had skirted around this subject for years, refusing commissions, terrified of not being able to capture a likeness. This was and is a reasonable fear. If someone pays you to draw Steve, they expect you to draw Steve, not his cousin! Faces are so subtly different; we all have the same components, and yet we most definitely do not look like one another. (However, I do tend to get all the cookie-cutter blondies on The O’Reilly Factor mixed up. . . )
What to do? This was a brick wall on which I had been bashing my head for years. A wise friend said, “Why don’t you pray about it?” Duh. So, I did. Within the year, the CPSA offered 2 separate workshops on colored pencil portraiture, and the principles definitely crossed over to graphite. I was on my way in portraits! However, this will always be a difficult subject for me; unless I pray through each and every portrait, I do tend to draw the guy’s cousin. The subtle differences can just divert a face from the intended person to a stranger or a distance relative with a slight mis-stroke of the pencil.
Growth, part four (Venturing into color)
Just Picked – colored pencil – 18 x 21″ – $550
Just when I thought I “had it made” and was settling in to The One Way To Do An Art Business, several of my students wanted to learn colored pencil. In high school, my friend Lisa thought watercolors were for babies, and I had the same opinion of colored pencils. First, I had to find a new attitude toward colored pencils; second I had to learn to use them correctly. This happened through books and the Colored Pencil Society of America. They offer seminars and workshops that are phenomenal in their variety and scope – this is a wonderful organization. http://www.cpsa.org/
Growth, part three (Learning to teach)
The next step in the saga of growing an art business was teaching people how to draw. It has always been a very rewarding challenge to help people learn to see, to break down the process into manageable steps and to spend time with wonderful people that I might never have gotten the chance to know. That grew, and eventually I had to move somewhere that gave me the flexibility to teach more classes. Over time, the list of people wanting to take lessons expanded to 85 people! I had as many as 50 students at one time in classes of 4-5 per hour.
Pencil drawing by S. Brown – private collection
Growth, part two (Cards & Commissions)
I used to draw pictures that fit nicely into sets of notecards, which then sold very well both retail and wholesale. I still do a few cards, but the market just isn’t as big. In fact, it is microscopic. Tell me, how many cards, thank yous and little notes do you send a year? How many do you receive? Hmmmm, really have to think about that one. Cards do sell, but not very many anymore. (Despite the handiness of communicating via computer, the truth is, no one ever cherished an email, so there.)
In addition, I drew cabins and homes on a commission basis. (still do!) That was the sum total of my abilities in the early years, and it kept me quite busy.
Growth, part one
Ever read the book Who Moved My Cheese? If I remember it correctly, it is about the necessity of changing and keeping up. Way way way back when I first started selling art, I drew a picture of the Kaweah Post Office. It was not very good, but I was too dumb to know the difference between good and not good and too excited to calm down and study it and repair the not-so-good parts. Instead, I had 100 reproductions made and began selling them. If you have one of those and would like to trade it for a better version, please let me know – it will be FREE. This offer is good for the first 9 8 people who respond and PHYSICALLY HAND ME THE OLD PRINT!! Of course, if you’d like to just buy one, you may do so here: https://www.cabinart.net/reproductions_new.shtml There are only 2 remaining prints of the Post Office, so the offer is now officially expired.
Inner Slob
You have probably heard it said that inside each fat person is a thin one screaming to be set free.
I am the converse of that statement.
Don’t think that I think I am thin; I’m not, but I’m certainly not obese.(or “obeast” as I heard an acquaintance once pronounce it. I’m guessing she isn’t much of a reader.)
However, each day as I march out the door to take a power walk (4-8 miles at a 15 minute mile pace), I am leaving coffee, a comfortable armchair, the woodstove in the winter, knitting, my Bible, a library book or two, my cats, and many other lovely sedentary preoccupations.
Each day as I resolutely march out to my studio to paint, draw, plan, return phone calls or any other task necessary to keeping my business going, I pass numerous Adirondack chairs strategically placed around my yard for the purpose of taunting me.
They call out, they whisper, they cajole, they plead.
What are they saying? “Sit and knit!
Enjoy life from a stationary viewpoint!
Relax!
LEAVE THE INNER FAT GIRL ALONE!”
One time I finally sat down and this is what happened to the chair. A girl could get a fat complex. . .
Bridges, the follow-up
In January I wrote a short posting about bridges. In it I stated that whoever was the first to name the 3 beautiful bridges in Tulare County would receive a reproduction print from me of one of those bridges. The winner is Stan from Woodlake and he correctly named Pumpkin Hollow (the bridge at the Gateway Restaurant in Three Rivers), Oak Grove (the bridge 7 miles up the Mineral King Road) and the Clover Creek Bridge in Sequoia. Congratulations, Stan! I have prints of the first two, and here is Pumpkin Hollow for you to see. I will bring it and the Oak Grove Bridge on Sunday and you can choose!