A friend asked me to draw this cabin, another one that didn’t survive the wildfires. Her photos were fairly inadequate, but my confidence in making up things is growing. This is due to experience, both with cabins, and knowing that most people don’t observe detail to the degree that I do when drawing.
The front door of a place is the most important feature, and this one is hidden by the dual trees. I asked my friend if I could remove those trees and if she could describe the front door. She said yes to both.
When custom art jobs are tricky, meaning when there aren’t adequate photos, a sketch is often helpful. This one has an unusual roof shape on the left gable end, and a surprisingly wide chimney, along with steps that were hidden behind the tree that I removed.
Someone I have never met contacted me to draw a house I’ve never seen. When I received the photo, I marked it with colored circles, and sent an email asking for closer photos or descriptions of what each circle contained.
The customer was very responsive, and sent helpful photos of each area. This was on a tight deadline, and silly me, I forgot to mention the rush charge. I also didn’t save the detail photos of each area of mystery, because space on my laptop is limited.
You can see that the photo was taken with a phone, using the built-in wide-angle lens. This distorts things – the verticals aren’t vertical, and distant things look farther away while closer things appear too big.
Time was fleeing quickly, so I just dove in. Often if I draw the parts I can see and understand, then the other parts aren’t so daunting and can be faked somewhat.
Thanks to great communication with the customer, I was able to finish the drawing well ahead of the requested date and also get good instructions about the parts that the original photo didn’t explain.
Many artists get their start in custom work by drawing or paintings people’s pets. My start came with architecture, specifically cabins. “Cabinart” – get it?
Occasionally I get commissioned to draw or paint people’s pets, more dogs than cats. Here is the most recent, shown here today because I feel fairly confident that the intended recipient doesn’t know about me or this blog.
Just for curiosity’s sake, have a look at a few previous custom dog drawings:
In case you are wondering, here is information about custom dog drawings (cats too):
Being eye-level with the animal makes for better photos than looking down at them. Notice the difference between the top drawing and the lower three.
Black animals are extremely hard to photograph and thus to draw; seeing details is almost impossible.
Clothing on animals is just weird; I have no earthly idea what the various parts and pieces of clothing are on the top drawing, and the less I understand what I am seeing, the more difficult it is to draw it.
Usually people want little lap dogs of undetermined ancestry, the type of dog that makes me want to scream while standing on a chair. I manage to keep my panic at bay while armed with pencils. (German Shepherds, Australian Shepherds and yellow Labradors are more my style, although cats will always be my preference.)
There is still time to have your pet drawn, but there will be a rush charge.
The custom art jobs are slowly getting completed. Many of them cannot be shown, because the recipients might be readers of this blog. Can’t be giving away secrets like that just before Christmas!
This is a drawing that the recipient has already received. It began with some sketches.
The customer didn’t want these subjects shown this way. (Why did they – customer and assistant – send me these photos to work from??)
I tried again from the photos they specified out of the batches they had sent to me. (Often multiple photos help me see details that might be obstructed by shade or trees or trash cans or cars or. . .)
This was accepted, but the customer requested that the upper left image not be on a tilt.
It was a rush job, so I spent all day on a Saturday and a few hours on Sunday completing the drawing.
The upper right scene was drawn from another rush job for the same customer several years ago.
P.S. This was a very challenging job, causing me to rethink my custom prices and available sizes for collages. I know for sure now that 9×12″ is too small for this amount of detail (BRICKS – oy vey!)
Or, if you read Anne Lamott, one bird at a time*. That’s the way I will accomplish this large complicated custom pencil drawing.
My large paper has more texture than I am used to. This will mean adding more layers than usual.As a right-hander, there is less smearing if I work top to bottom, left to right. (This isn’t smeared all over the center – it is the shadow cast by my magnifying light.)
The paper’s texture means that smearing is more of a problem than usual, so I cover it with tissue paper for protection whenever I leave the studio.
As with many of my projects, I start out wondering if I have bitten off more than I can chew. Once I see a little progress, my confidence returns, and pretty soon I start really enjoying the project. This one is no different; each segment gives a sense of accomplishment, so instead of thinking that the end is far away, I get to experience many little endings.
*Anne Lamott wrote a book about writing called Bird By Bird.
I have learned to draw from photos on my laptop instead of mediocre prints from my mediocre printer on mediocre paper and instead of waiting for high quality prints from Shutterfly. This means I can enlarge on the screen for understanding the detail more. This also means I can’t measure. Everything is a mixed bag.
The complicated custom collage drawing began with these photos, and even more.
Then I began laying it out on the giant piece of paper, using the approved sketch as my map. 14×18″ is a lot of real estate to cover with the point of a pencil.
Can you see the lines on the paper? “Just barely” is the answer I am looking for.
This is a big job, a complicated one, but I, your Central California artist am up for the task.
Today we have the pleasure of a guest post, something I have never had in 12 years of blogging! Sharon Devol is a real life friend, and the most regular commenter on this blog. She always has something interesting to add, and when I half-jokingly suggested she write a guest post, she was graciously eager.
This is Sharon’s personal story of her family’s Mineral King cabin.
My family connection to Mineral King starts in 1930 when my grandparents, Van and Mary Dixon, visited Faculty Flat (JB here – Faculty Flat is about a mile below the end of the Mineral King Road, so called because it was first settled by educators from Southern California) on the invitation of faculty colleague, Dr. Bates of the Bates-Bell Cabin.For the next 20 years Van and Mary and their two daughters, Diane and Shirley, used the Bates-Bell Cabin until the cabin built in 1926 by Lou and Mary Lou Coole came up for sale. Despite its primitive condition, the daughters begged Daddy to buy it, and the Dixon family set to work to clean and improve the cabin.
I first visited our cabin when I was one year old, and time at Mineral King has been a part of my summer ever since.
Coole Cabin as built in 19262020, same cabin
Quite an improvement made by a physics professor married to a home economics teacher with elbow grease provided by various family members.And we descendants of Van and Mary Dixon so appreciate their love, care, and hard work to make our family a warm and inviting place to visit each summer.
P.S. by Jana – A few years ago, I got the chance to update the drawing I did of Sharon’s cabin in 1992, because I draw better now. Goodness, an artist would certainly hope so. (Nope, not going to show you the first version because I deleted it, so there.)
