This is the second set of Sequoia National Park scenes, chosen with the help of my wonderful contact in the Park. These are designs that I still like, in spite of them being about 20 years old now. The cards sold well, but alas, by this time, personal note writing was in its final stages. These sets are gone, and there are no plans to resurrect them.
With a good contact in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, and success with the Sequoia sets of cards, together we chose scenes for Kings Canyon.
There were probably 5 drawings, but I can only find these 4 samples. You can see that I finally got comfortable drawing the textures of landscaping.
After publishing the notecard set of Backcountry Structures of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, I moved into the front country of the park. That’s where most of the people visit, and now I had connections in the organization that stocked the ranger stations and visitor centers in the parks.
I didn’t save any labels, so I don’t know if this is when I switched to 4 cards per package instead of 5, or if I lost a sample card along the way. I remember taking the photos for these drawings, because my niece went with me. There was a long line for photos in front of the General Sherman Tree, so Ashley and I got in line. When it was our turn, she went up to the tree and then laid on the ground behind the sign so I could take a photo without any people in it. The other visitors were quite puzzled by this, but I was thrilled by Ashley’s innovative solution. I think I actually drew her into the picture of the Four Guardsmen, but now I can’t see details that small.
To be continued. . .
Confidence grew with each set of cards I drew, printed, and sold. Tulare County was too small – look out California, because the Central California artist is heading your way!!
In the 4th grade, we studied the 21 California missions, which were built in the 1700s and 1800s by Franciscan priest, Junipero Serra. Even back then I loved old buildings.
I chose 5 of the 21, with some sort of logic that I can no longer remember. There are 2 missing pictures here – San Juan Bautista, and the one near Oceanside, whose name I have forgotten.
This California mission idea was suggested by a friend, and although my inner cautionary voice told me not to do it, I ignored that intuition, dismissing it as pessimism.
Should have listened.
I printed the largest quantity yet, and went to my regular outlets, which bought them in small cautionary quantities. Next, I hit the road with my best friend to sell these. Alas, none of the 5 missions wanted them because they only cared about their own place. I wasn’t willing to break up the sets, and it was crazy hard to find gift shops in towns where I knew no one. I tried Harris Ranch, a huge tourist place along Interstate 5, smack dab in the middle of the state. It took many phone calls, several appointments, lots of free samples, and finally I realized that this was not profitable, because in addition to the distance, their gift shop buyers quit every few months.
I finally consented to selling the cards individually to some of the missions, had one very nice gift shop in Carmel who wanted the variety pack, and kept selling tiny quantities to the local stores.
Eventually I got real, and gave all the remaining cards to every fourth grade teacher I knew.
The lesson there was to listen to that inner cautionary voice and not dismiss it. Although one might not be able to articulate why something doesn’t feel right, there are usually solid reasons behind the reluctance, even if it is only manifested as hidden sense inside the intuition.
At least Judy and I had a great time on our road trip.
In 1993, Trail Guy went from being seasonal Maintenance Guy to Road Guy, a fulltime job with Sequoia National Park. This meant I could really focus on my art, since he had a better income. A friend invited me to move my studio into her gift shop in Exeter, and I was ON MY WAY!!! To where?? I didn’t know, but I was going, so there.
The friend was instrumental in teaching me about selling, marketing, display, professionalism, and even how to dress better. I will be eternally grateful to her for her tutelage.
My next notecard set was Backcountry Structures in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. I had been to most of the cabins but didn’t have photos of them all. The Park’s “History Boys” were helpful in providing pictures and information about these charming little cabins in remote locations, and excited that I had chosen this subject for drawings and cards.
You can see that my focus remained on architectural subjects, and the textures and shapes of nature were just too hard. I did my best, but yikes. To save some pride, here are my recent drawings of two of these cabins. They were on the blog in December, but here they are again.
More next week on pencil reminiscing. . .
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. . .
It was thrilling to see my art come off a printing press as notecards. It was exciting to sell them to stores, and the ideas started piling in.
After Tulare County Landmarks and Mineral King Scenes, it was time to move to the city: Visalia Landmarks was hugely popular in the stores, which are now all closed.
I just trotted all over Visalia with my camera, taking photos without giving it a second thought, never asking permission, just excited to be out gathering new material for pencil drawings to be turned into little packages of notecards. It was fun to think of what to draw, fun to photograph it, fun to learn about and write up a description for the back, fun to be on my own figuring out how to do these things.
This was all done in the days of film cameras with its accompanying wait for the pictures to be developed. During that era, the magical and mysterious fax machine appeared, and we had no idea of email, cell phones, digital photography, the internet with all its huge changes to our lives. Pencils (and erasers) were all I needed.
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!
This could also be called “Notecard Reminiscing” or even “Back in the Olden Days”.
Back in the olden days, I worked in a print shop and drew in pencil. Pencil drawings of Tulare County landmarks printed on notecards were my “side hustle”, now the cool way to refer to a second job. It was a hobby to make money, a business that I hoped would outpace my real job.
Because I have always been a note and letter writer, finding stationery and cards with local art was what I looked for any time I traveled. It came to my attention that there weren’t any for Tulare County in spite of the fact that we have Sequoia National Park, and that we feed the world. From my viewpoint in Ivanhoe, then Visalia, and eventually Lemon Cove, it seemed that we had subjects that were good enough to be proud of and drawn. At that time I was only capable of drawing architectural subjects, so that is all I thought of. (Looking back at my work, I’d now say I was barely capable of such things, but growth is good, unless you are a tumor.)
This was back in 1987, and I knew nothing about branding oneself (yikes, as if we are cattle?) or marketing. I loved to draw, and felt lucky to be able to work in a print shop and know people who helped me figure out how to make my idea happen, along with people who owned shops that wanted to sell my merchandise.
There was a distant foggy hope that someday I could be self-employed as an artist, but that was far off in the future, along with having a real studio, owning a home, and being old like a real grown up.
To be continued. . .
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.
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.
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.