One of my mantras in drawing is “If I can’t see it, I can’t draw it”.  I tell customers that I need to work from my own photos, but have had a hard time convincing them to fly me to Montana, South Africa, Cape Cod, and all sorts of other wonderful places!                                                                                  During the summer, a local customer asked me to draw her house as a surprise for her husband. She said she’d take the photos, so my lazy self said “why not?”   I gave her a few instructions, and she emailed the photos to me.  I asked for a little different angle here, a detail there, a little more this and that. She emailed to me again. We went back and forth like this for a morning until I finally thought I had photos that were usable (actually I thought I’d better just shut up or she might be too irritated to go through with the job!)                                                                                                                             When someone wants a house drawn, often it is because a good photo isn’t possible due  a myriad of visual obstacles such as large trees, telephone poles, cliff edges, etc. This house is no exception, so I had to create a sketch for her to see if the changes I made (moving a group of large trees) were acceptable.  She agreed, and I began the drawing.                                                                                                                                    Turns out that even with the carefully taken photos provided, I still couldn’t find all the parts. So yesterday I had to go to the house and actually see with my own eyes what is there. I drew it on sketch paper, rearranged the landscaping while trying to keep things in the right order, wrote notes all over the sketches, and then took my own photos.  Why is it when I know a thing to be true, I still keep trying to skate around it? (gotta get rid of that lazy self!) These photos are some of the details that I shot yesterday. I have to be somewhat discreet here and not show the house, because it is a surprise!