pencil drawing | Cabin Art

Drawing a Cabin I’ve Never Seen

With much of the custom art that I do, I don’t get to actually see the places in person. This is less tricky than in the olden days of film cameras and waiting for pictures to get developed and then put in the mail.

Someone I’ve never met saw a copy of my book The Cabins of Wilsonia, went to my website, and used the contact button to ask me if I could draw her parents’ cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

(Obviously I needed my website redesigned to emphasize the fact that I make art people can understand of places and things they love at prices that won’t scare them – i.e. CUSTOM ART!)

As usual, I said I’d need to see the photos first. She sent me several.

This is the main view of the cabin, but I can’t see what is on the left or on the right.

I looked at multiple photos, asked some questions, and did this sketch to see if I was understanding the missing parts correctly.

The customer sent me more information.

This sketch was helpful in understanding the chimney placement on the right.

This photo helps me understand what is covering the chimney in case it needs to show.

This still doesn’t explain what is happening on the left.

I began the drawing, even though I didn’t have all the answers yet.

The customer explained the trees surrounding the cabin, and there are 2 large sycamores very close, but not appearing in any photos that she sent. They sounded important, so I dug through my enormous stacks of photos and found some sycamore branches and leaves. These are drawn in the upper left corner because I want the cabin to look nestled and surrounded.

I got a little nervous about putting in those sycamore leaves without first asking. For awhile, I procrastinated, just counting boards, measuring window panes, and growing ferns.

Finally, I took these photos and sent them to her. She was thrilled and I was relieved.

I asked again about the left end gable because it shows in the drawing, and I want it to be right. She responded immediately with this immensely helpful photo.

Doing custom art of places I’ve never been to requires many photos, conversations, and sketches. It is a mystery and a puzzle, and when I am on the right track, it is enormously satisfying to grant the customer’s wishes and exceed her expectations.

Meanwhile, may I interest you in a copy of The Cabins of Wilsonia?

Completed Cabin Drawing

I learned that the cabin owner was going to be present in Mineral King, so I put the “pedal to the metal” and finished the drawing late one evening in the studio in order to deliver it in person. The customer was very pleased and surprised.

There is a great deal of satisfaction and relief when I have a chance to redraw something from my Primitive Era. (That’s what my dad told me to to call my earlier artwork.)

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Drawings, Old & New

Have I told you lately that I love to draw in pencil?

Last week I had the opportunity to give a drawing lesson to a girl that I only see once a year while in Mineral King. Instead of taking her through all the usual steps, I took a shortcut to a finished drawing. This is because she will be drawing on her own, far away without me hovering and coaching.

After looking through my photos, she chose this photo:

We went through the beginning steps, and suddenly, 2 hours had passed. Now what?? How can I help her continue?

By drawing the picture for her and letting her copy the drawing, that’s how! It is easiest to learn to draw from other people’s drawings, because you can see what they made the pencil do.

To keep my head from getting fat, have a look at these two sketches from 1985 and 1986. WHY do my friends keep these things? And WHY do they send them to me?? To keep my head from getting fat, of course.

That “artist” could have used a few drawing lessons.

P.S. What a blessing to still be friends and in touch with people after 35 years!

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Pencil Reminiscing, Part Four

After my booming (in my own little mind) success with the original set of notecards for Tulare County, Mineral King, and Visalia landmarks, I moved on. My memory is fuzzy about which card sets came next, and at what point I quit my job in the print shop. I worked from our little house in Lemon Cove and supplemented my income with a summer job baking at the Silver City Store, helping out at a friend’s Exeter gift shop for Christmas, and filling in at the printer when they had need.

The ideas continued to flow. Now it was time for Tulare County Landmarks II, which moved into other towns of the county.

Since this set included Lindsay, Tulare, Porterville, and Exeter, I found stores in all those little towns to sell the cards. I may have spent as much in gas expenses to drive around calling on the stores as my profits.

(The little circles are holes; these cards were samples for customers to see what was in the variety packages.)

To be continued. . .

pencil drawing pencil drawings Tulare County art

Pencil Reminiscing, Part Two

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!

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Because She Asked

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.

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Hockett Meadow, Two Pencil Drawings

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.

If you bought art from me back then, THANK YOU!!

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Another Secret Cabin Drawing

How “secret” is something on the World Wide Web?

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.

cabin pencil drawings pencil drawing

Loves Pencil, Loves to Draw

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.

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.

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