My drawing students are used to me telling them, “You can be fast or you can be good; I get to be both.”
The braggadocio recently got tested. Someone had an art emergency, and gave me about 5 drawing days to complete a commissioned pencil drawing. There were more calendar days than just five, but I can no longer do detailed work in Mineral King (eyes too old and no drawing table or electricity for the magnifying light or to recharge the computer when using photos from it), and I had a funeral to attend, groceries to buy, and some sprinklers to keep running (the landscaping project at church, can’t find the link but you prolly* don’t need to see it anyway, and who cares about “SEO” and all the internet hoops to increase visitation, mostly by scammers and robots? Not this little gray duck.)
First steps
The customer had to get to the cabin, sneak photos when the intended recipient of the drawing was gone, and text them to me. Then I had to transfer them to the laptop and sort through, finding duplicates, organizing by potential usefulness. There were many important questions to be answered: Is the garage important? Is the fire ring important? May I move the sign? Where is the name of the cabin? Is the fairy house important? How many umbrellas are usually on the porch? May I leave off some of those lounge chairs?
Second step
Slammed out a sketch for approval. (I’ve whited out the cabin name and address because after all, this IS the World Wide Web, and we respect privacy in this corner.)
Good thing the customer has faith in my ability to draw. This sketch was fast, but it wadn’t* good by any stretch other than it shows what will be in the drawing.
Starting
I started laying it out, and then got a little tired of that. Shading is the funnest* part, so I started in the upper left so that my right handedness doesn’t smear as I work across.
At the end of the work day (nope, not using the tiresome cliche “at the end of the day”), I was this far along.
I love to draw!
*Wadn’t” is right there with “tryna”, “prolly”, “liberry”, and “Remorial Building”. You may recall that I attended high school in Visalia, the least (second least according to another article) educated city in the entire United States. Let’s just have some fun with that fact.
4 Comments
An art emergency!!! Everyone stand back and let Jana get to work!!
But really, you’ve got the speed and talent to make this a wonderful, special piece of art for someone.
I’m smiling to think of what a nice surprise it’ll be for them.
Ha! Wadn’t is another great word!
Michelle, I wadn’t sure this was a true art emergency, but I was tryna git-‘er-dun as fast as possible.
You are definitely both, Jana!!
Thank you for the vote of confidence, Elisabeth, but this commission definitely dented my confidence in the “fast” category. Sometimes it makes more sense to spend several hours driving somewhere to take my own photos. I’d never considered before how much trouble it is to explain to someone how to take the necessary pictures, and how hard it is to sort out the large number of pictures they send.