Cabin Drawing in Pencil

My business and website is called Cabin Art or Cabinart. This is because when I began, I lived in a cabin and I drew cabins.

I still live in a cabin (part time) and still draw them.

Here is the latest commissioned pencil drawing of a Mineral King cabin:

After seeing the Hume Lake cabin drawing from 1995 and reworking it, you can bet your boots that I was hyper-careful while working on this drawing. The photos were mine from 2 different photography sessions, there was much conversation about what should and shouldn’t appear, I used multiple photos to be certain of what I was seeing, and I went over the entire drawing with a magnifying glass at the end. In another 22 years, I don’t expect I will be able to repair or improve this one.

Proof That I Draw Better Now

It just occurred to me that perhaps you might disagree with my evaluation of  what “drawing better” actually looks like.

Bummer. Having a blog often means taking a risk, so here goes.

This is the little Hume Lake cabin as I drew it from the customer’s photos in 1995. (I didn’t draw the bug spot, or whatever that is.)

Here it is after reworking it, using photos I took earlier this month.

I feel relieved to have gotten a second chance to make this drawing the best I know how.

I Draw Better Now

In 1995, I drew a Hume Lake cabin from the customer’s photos.

Last week I had the pleasure of staying in that cabin and seeing it for the first time. The customer’s daughter and I grew up together and have recently reconnected.

She brought the drawing to Hume Lake, and I was dismayed to see it had a bug spot on it. It also was missing the flag, and now I put flags in color into my pencil drawings whenever possible. Besides, I draw better now.

Daughter allowed me to remove it from the frame and bring it home with me. The biggest thing was to discover if the drawing had been spray-fixed, which would not allow me to do any erasing. I can’t put color over pencil and have it look like anything good – it needs to have blank paper beneath the color. 

YEA! I can repair, replace, add, and improve it, because it isn’t spray-fixed!! Stay tuned – I hope to have some studio time next week to do the work of making this drawing something to be proud of.

P.S. Tomorrow’s post will be of a funny walk at Hume Lake.

And More Designing a Book

I offered to design a book for an author friend. Let’s call her “Louise”, because that is her name.

Louise discussed it with the 3 people who commissioned her to write their story, and they gratefully accepted my offer.

I read up on book design, learning most of what I needed from The Book Designer‘s website. I had paid him for consultation to be sure I wasn’t messing up The Cabins of Wilsonia. He charged more for one hour than I often earn in a week, but he was worth every dollar. He is a fount of helpful information.

I bought a template from him to use with InDesign, thinking this would be simple and easy and fast and how awesome to just slam this thing out with all my previous experience and knowledge.

Fall down laughing. . .

Look at some of the work:

  1. Learn how to change the template so the chapter titles appear as running heads instead of the author’s name by emailing the Book Designer for help, several times because, well, because it is complicated.
  2. Change the master template page things to have chapter titles in the space where Louise’s name would have appeared.
  3. Find that in normal books, the chapter titles are on the right page, not the left. If you have the author’s name on every spread, the title goes on the right. If you have the chapter titles on each spread, the title goes on the left.
  4. Change the master template page things again to accommodate this new information.
  5. Realize I have the power to eliminate many of the hyphenated words at the end of lines, and go through all 300 pages to fix as many as possible.
  6. See that changing the hyphenation caused some of the photos to land in the middle of paragraphs, so go back through the 300 pages to scoot them.
  7. Louise and I decide that a plain divider line looked too plain, so design a fancier, but not too fancy divider line.
  8. Replace the divider line with the pretty one.
  9. Go back through the 300 pages and see that I missed some.
  10. Find that there is a spell check on InDesign and decide it can’t hurt to run it in spite of the facts that I used spellcheck on Word,  Louise and I have proofed it many many times, as have the 3 people
  11. Find a few typos.

Fall down laughing with exhaustion. . .

This pencil drawing of a Wilsonia cabin invites me to sit on the porch and contemplate a life without InDesign.
This pencil drawing of a Wilsonia cabin invites me to sit on the porch and contemplate a life without InDesign.

Designing a Book

What is book design? That’s a question I asked back in 1998 when Jane Coughran and I published The Cabins of Mineral King.

The answer was too complex and computerish for me to comprehend. We paid someone to prepare our book for printing, and I had no understanding whatsoever of what was involved.

When I published The Cabins of Wilsonia, I figured I could do that stuff myself, being the owner of a Macbook and having written this blog for 5 years (at that time).

Holy guacamole. I had no pickin’ idea. It involved buying InDesign and learning to use it. This necessitated 2 trips to Seattle for training and many desperate calls for help. It also involved a huge number of uncharitable and unChristian thoughts towards Adobe, the makers of InDesign and Photoshop Elements, the latter of which is supposed to be simple to use.

Fall down laughing. . .

In spite of the difficulties, I got ‘er dun.

This gave me a false sense of confidence in believing I could do the book design for someone else, 2 years of forgetting later.

Oh my. This calls for a calming picture, and I’ll have to continue this little saga tomorrow.

Willow 5
Pencil drawing of cabin porch from The Cabins of Wilsonia. This is a good place to sit and contemplate the peacefulness of no computers.

Firewood by the Wilsonia Door

Wilsonia cabin drawing

What is it about doors that is so attractive? In this pencil drawing, it is the light and shadow.

Does this look like a cabin to you?

What is a cabin? A little home in the mountains, but it can be a big fancy-pants home in the mountains too. (Ask my sister-in-law who lives in Tahoe!) But is any home in the mountains a cabin?

So many questions. That’s how I am wired. That’s how I learn, think, make decisions, and roll.

This looks like a cabin because there is firewood piled by the door. Did you notice that?

You can get a copy of The Cabins of Wilsonia here: The Cabins of Wilsonia.

Porch Time in Wilsonia

Wilsonia cabin drawing

Porch time is big in Wilsonia. People with cabins spend more time outside than inside. Umbrellas abound, and people read, watch deer, nap, and greet folks who are passing by. Sometimes they listen to birds, look up names in bird books, or play solitaire. I’ve seen people quilting, and if it were me, I’d be knitting.

What would you do on the porch of your cabin?

I really do knit on mine. Of course, I am always knitting, unless I am reading.

How do I have time to knit or read with all this drawing, painting and blogging?

Easy. When I’m off work!

For more, order your book The Cabins of Wilsonia here: The Cabins of Wilsonia.

Unsolved Building Mysteries in Wilsonia

Happy Birthday, Audrey!

A man cave? A Dude Den? a tool shed? guest quarters (so they won’t be inclined to overstay)?

Even after four years of visiting Wilsonia while working on The Cabins of Wilsonia, there are still many unsolved mysteries.

Get your copy here to learn about (or at least just look at) many mysterious buildings in Wilsonia: The Cabins of Wilsonia

Willow 4
Pencil drawing of Wilsonia outbuilding

Neighborly Wilsonia

wilsonia cabin drawing
Pencil drawing of Wilsonia cabins

Sometimes the backsides of cabins were more interesting to me than the fronts. There are porches, fire rings, sheds, and little paths (in the mountains we tend to refer to paths as “trails”) leading from neighbor to neighbor.

Mountain communities like Wilsonia tend to be very neighborly.

To learn more, you can order your copy of The Cabins of Wilsonia here.