The light on this cabin is just beautiful. Light is EVERYTHING in art.
I never did meet the people who own this cabin. They might not even know there is a book called The Cabins of Wilsonia (available here. for $80) They might not even know that there is a great drawing of their cabin in the book. They might not even know that the original drawing of their cabin is for sale.
Isn’t it great to live in The Information Age??
The Cabins of Wilsonia is available for sale here: The Cabins of Wilsonia
Here is today’s drawing for you.
I donated the original drawing to the silent auction held each year by the Wilsonia cabin owners. Some lucky person outbid her competitors and won the drawing.
THEN, the owners of the cabin became aware of the drawing. Bummer.
I offered to redraw it for them. We were discussing views, and the Rough Fire came along and Wilsonia got closed. Bummer.
The cabin survived, Wilsonia survived and maybe I’ll get to redraw the cabin for the owners next summer.
I do commissioned pencil drawings of cabins all the time. It is how my business began. It is why I call it “cabinart“.
It took me 4 years to learn Wilsonia, plan the book, take the photos, design the book, gather the quotes and complete 272 drawings.
The book is available here: The Cabins of Wilsonia
Here is another drawing for you from the book. Thanks for looking!
My other blog, The Cabins of Wilsonia, is broken. I’ve neglected it and now I don’t want to get trapped on the phone with weird music in the background while a recorded voice tells me the same lie over and over.
“Due to an unusually high volume of calls, we are experiencing long wait times. We appreciate your business and want to provide great customer service.”
Yea. Sure. If the volume is unusually high, why do callers get this recording EVERY SINGLE TIME we call you?
So, I will be posting things from The Cabins of Wilsonia here on my “real” blog, starting today.
The book is finished and available for sale here: The Cabins of Wilsonia
It is a beautiful book and it costs $80.
I will just be showing you cabin drawings from the book now. Let’s begin with the cover.
It was my wish to put any American flag in the book in color, but it would have made the cost of the book go up to about $200. Seemed a little steep, don’t you think?
There are still a few of the 2016 calendars, “The Cabins of Tulare County” for sale. This calendar is a collection of pencil drawings of cabins in Tulare County. (Captain Obvious speaks again.) It is heavy on Wilsonia, followed by Mineral King, and there is one token Camp Nelson. These drawings are gathered from the book The Cabins of Wilsonia, and various commissioned drawings I’ve done in the past year or two.
Have a look at the unidentified months. I didn’t attempt to find seasonal pictures, other than a snowy cabin in December. Cabins, for the most part, are summer homes.
The calendars are $15 each, including sales tax. If you send me a check in the mail or money using Paypal, AND YOU GIVE ME YOUR ADDRESS (excuse me for shouting – someone ordered via Paypal and didn’t give me her address or answer my email – how is she going to get her calendar??), then I will get your calendar to you and pay the mailing costs. (in the USA only)
Sometimes I get emails or phone calls asking where to buy the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia.
The 2 short answers are:
Amazon is self-explanatory if one shops online. Here is the link. The Cabins of Wilsonia
“From me” has options:
The book is $81, which includes tax. I will pay the mailing costs, and no, I don’t charge a “handling fee”. (Doesn’t it bug you when a company says “free shipping” and then tacks on a “handling fee”?)
Here is another handy Paypal Add To Cart button so you don’t even have to test out any of those other methods.
True confessions of a confused artist: I can’t figure out if the Add To Cart button includes sales tax. If you get charged more than $81 when using this button, I will reimburse you. Sometimes the very technology that is supposed to simplify our lives just confounds, confuses and complicates things. Or is it just me?
That would be “commissioned pencil drawing of a Wilsonia cabin completed”, but that title was stupid-long.
This drawing is 12×16″, and chock full of details. (What does “chock full” mean??)
It has been a couple of weeks since you saw the progression, so let’s review.
First, the sketches so the customer could choose the angle. Then, some revisions, which don’t appear in these sketches.
Next, I began the drawing, working from top to bottom and left to right. That is because I am right-handed, and don’t want to drag my hand across the piece as I’m working it. If I have to revisit an area on the left, I rest my hand on a piece of paper to protect the other parts from smearing.
The customers wanted their water wheel added, which didn’t show in the sketch. It was tiny, but it is there!
I spent a week on this, refining, darkening, figuring out what was in the shadows, sharpening up edges so the cabin would pop out from the background, experimenting with ways to make the forest look better than just scribbles. You’d think I’d have that figured out after drawing the entire book The Cabins of Wilsonia, but it never comes easy.
And at the end of a week of very concentrated drawing, here is the final result.
The customers were very happy, and that is always my goal, so I am very happy too.
Happy, happy, happy.
Thank you, Veterans. You probably didn’t want to go, probably didn’t like being there, maybe questioned why, but you did it so we didn’t have to. Thank you! (including, especially, Cousin Bruce)
I would have said “Wilsonia Cabin Commission”, but I liked 3 Cs in a row in the title.
When you compare this to yesterday’s work, you can see that it is inching forward to the right. You can also see that some of the shadows have been darkened. If you are really focused, you might detect that some of the edges are sharper and see that there is more detail on individual rocks and more pencil on the ground.
The right edge of this image is dark and fuzzy because this drawing is 12×16 and doesn’t fit very well on the scanner. Inquiring minds need to know these things.
For over a year, a pencil commission of a Wilsonia cabin has been waiting for decisions to be made by the cabin owners. I too have been waiting. And waiting and waiting and waiting.
We finally got together in person and discussed some details. They chose a view, chose a size, and paid a deposit.
I got a little ahead of myself in this commission. Normally the customer decides the size, pays 1/2 down, and then I take the photos and do the sketches. For several reasons, I didn’t do this one in the right order, which made me nervous. In the past, when the steps get out of sequence, I usually do a bunch of work for free. Then, the customer just flakes away, because he has no monetary commitment, or as in today’s vernacular, “no skin in the game”.
Not these folks. I persisted, we finally connected, and now this drawing is in progress!
Lots of fuzzy background trees – my hope is to add interest (and distract from all the vagueness) by adding that closer branch.
Lots and lots of little details too. I was relieved they didn’t want all the signs, the 2 bridges, the bird house, the bird bath, the wind chimes, the plaque, etc. The water wheel and wishing well were fiddly enough.
As a right-hander, I work from top to bottom, left to right. This minimizes the smearing from my hand dragging across the piece as I draw.
In order to sell books, I need to take them to groups and talk about them. So, I will begin with the Tulare-Kings Genealogical Society on Thursday evening, this week.
My entire point of the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, is that Cabin Communities Matter.
There isn’t much to brag on in Tulare County in terms of architecture. There’s my favorite bridge (on the Mineral King Road), the Fox Theater in Visalia is quite handsome, and there are various homes around the county that are respectable. What I think is truly remarkable is our cabin communities, particularly Wilsonia.
You knew that already because I spent 4 years making a book about it.
So, it is time for me to begin promoting my book. Here is the first event of that nature:
Relevant Links:
