Can’t Draw It If You Can’t See It

“If you can’t see it, you can’t draw it”, is one of the regular things I say to my drawing students.

Along came an author, writing on local history, seeking someone to illustrate some pictures in his book. He wanted drawings because several of his photos are awful, and he wisely thought it better to have a good drawing than a poor photo.

My students and I have gotten a good laugh about my accepting this job. Portraiture is my least favorite subject. There are such subtle differences between faces, and if you can’t see it, you can’t draw it.

However, there is no one left who knows what Edythe Tate Thompson looked like, and this is the only known photograph of her. So, I did my best to make her look pleasant and human, although she may have been super-human. She was responsible for bringing the tuberculosis hospital to Springville, and responsible for getting Julia Morgan to design the first building.

I don’t think I captured an exact likeness. She looks happier to me in the drawing, more approachable. Maybe her face is a touch too wide, maybe her mouth is; I think I’ve put her eyebrows farther apart If you knew Edythe and have a photo of her, let me know.

 

Odd Job Completed

The odd job of painting a mailbox took about 4 hours. Maybe 5, but that extra hour was probably due to my own inexperience and lack of confidence. Oh, and another hour working on the colored pencil design. 

Will the customer be happy? As a friend, will she tell me the truth if she isn’t happy? I think she will – honesty is one of the things I appreciate about her. She is kind and professional too.

I have some wonderful friends.

She likes it!!

Now, will I start getting mailbox painting requests??

More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Odd Job

Because I am an artist who has lived in the same area for over 30 years, making art the entire time, when people need something art related, no matter how odd, I often get asked. People ask me to do things that I am supremely unqualified to do, lacking skill and experience.

Sometimes, no, often, I say yes. I try to warn them that I am out of my area of expertise and that the results might not be what they expected. (“Past performance is no guarantee of future results” or some such disclaimer?)

Variety is good. Stretching one’s abilities is good. The trouble is, I have only been asked to paint on a quilt square once, a patio umbrella one time, an antique window once. . . is this because I didn’t do a good job, or because there aren’t enough of those types of jobs? 

This odd job is a mailbox for a property management company. My friend told me her idea and showed me a photo of her mailbox. I did 3 sketches for her, she picked one, I gave her a price range and some instructions on how to prepare the mailbox and then drew it again showing both sides and the top, using colored pencils. Then I warned her that trying to achieve tight detail with acrylic paint and small brushes might not produce my normal quality of work.

She said she liked the design and the price and wants the job done. We had to plan this for a weekend when she could remove the mailbox on Friday and replace it on Monday. No pressure or anything. . .

Cabin Drawing Flag Adjustment

A flag seems like an appropriate topic for today.

The customers were sort of happy with their Mineral King cabin drawing, but not overjoyed. “Sort of happy” is not good enough. After a bit of conversation, they said the flag was too bright and drew too much attention.

My dad liked to quote a Latin phrase De gustibus non est disbutandem, which translates “it is useless to argue over matters of taste”.

I completely understand. A drawing is never finished until the customer is completely happy. While they were present in the studio, I redid the flag. Now they are happy!

Before:

After:

Because I did the flag in bright colored pencils before discussing it with them, I used Faber Castell’s Polychromos, an oil-based colored pencil that erases. Although I am very comfortable with the colors of Prismacolor and they are sitting very conveniently on my drawing table, they are wax-based colored pencils that don’t erase, so I resisted the urge to use them.

Phew.

 

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.

The Tree is Finished

Is the oak tree mural finished?? I think it is, although until the customer sees it (and my oak tree expert says it is believable), the question remains unanswered. 

It took about 20 hours to paint. All that time was alone except for the busy nice man from Delta Liquid Gas, a brief hello from a friend and a check-up by the property manager. I listened to Truman, written and read by David McCullough, listened to music (prolly a little dangerous to listen to “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” while on the top of an extension ladder), began listening to an updated audio version of How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (and someone else from the 21st century who applied Carnegie’s principles to the digital era) and spent a lot of time staring and thinking. Building a tree to look believable when none of my tree photos are the right shape takes a lot of thought.

Feeling fairly satisfied with the right side, I focused on the left side. I studied various areas, came up with thoughts like “too narrow, too short, too empty”, then climbed the ladder and tried to remember which thought applied to which area.
This shows twigs now added above the register.
The horizontal branch is too short, too narrow and too empty.
After the left side was done, most of the changes were just tiny adjustments, widening a branch here, adding a few more twigs there, touching up the drips, and just generally polishing things.
FINISHED! (Finished??)
Yep, 3 ladders in the Jeep! (Not my Jeep – I try to work for money, not for fun, I want my money when my work is done.) The extension ladder came with the job; the other 3 are mine. A muralist needs ladders (or a scissor lift, or a scaffold, or a big flatbed truck). 

A Tree Continues Growing in Three Rivers

On Day Two of the oak tree mural in Three Rivers, I walked to work, because I didn’t have to haul any paint. That is another benefit of working indoors – all supplies are secure overnight.

Yup. Looked the same on Day 2 as it did when I left at the end of Day 1.
On one of my many breaks, I took this photo through the sliding glass doors. You can see Alta Peak (the elephant!) and Moro Rock. The unsightly palm tree will be going away. And now the house across the street is also for sale – will it also become a vacation rental?? Time will tell. . .

I spent the day studying the mural from below, climbing up the ladder and working until I got confused and too hot. Then I’d climb down again, study the mural some more and make a next step branching plan, figure out which ladder needed to be moved next, reload my palette, and climb back up.

The extension ladder needed to go up another notch, which meant it bumps the ceiling each time I move it. Not complainin’, just ‘splainin’. 

In spite of the air conditioner working hard all day (and it was only about 99º, not in the triples), it was HOT HOT HOT up at ceiling level.

The stroke of brilliance looks really great in the late afternoon light coming in the window.

At the end of Day Two, this is what I had. I fattened the trunk, fattened lots of branches, and climbed up and down all day.

It seemed as if three days would do the trick.

A Tree Grows in Three Rivers

A Tree Grows in Three Rivers? Hokey, I know, and I can’t even remember what A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was about.

This is a commissioned mural inside of a home 2 doors away from me. It recently sold and will become yet another vacation rental in a town and neighborhood that is jammed full of such units. But that is a topic for another day, and probably another forum.

Working indoors is a pleasure – climate control, flat surface to stand on, consistent lighting, tunes or an audio book on my old laptop (why didn’t Apple include a CD slot in their new laptops?? – I get SO TIRED of “upgrades”, but again, a topic for another forum.)

This is what I found when I unlocked the door on Monday a.m. (a week ago). The carpet will be replaced, so no tarp was necessary. Weird.
This is outside the house and will have a human sized chess board, which I might be painting next.
I procrastinated a bit before beginning. Giant blank walls are intimidating.
I measured the height of the ceiling, because inquiring minds need to know. 14′. I climbed up the extension ladder and dropped a vertical so I could begin building the oak tree around it. It is the same method I use when drawing trees with pencil on paper (not with blue chalk – just a light pencil line).
The extension ladder was a bit cumbersome, so I went home for my own ladders.
After a bit of staring and thinking, I gave myself some more blue chalk guidelines.
A normal way to paint a mural is from the top down, but trees grow in the opposite direction.
There never is the perfect photo of the perfect tree, so I used all my oak tree photos to remind myself of the bark texture and the branching patterns. It is slow, thinky work.
This was a stroke of brilliance!
The raised hearth is helpful in boosting short ladders.

At the end of day one, this is what