Art from Hume Lake

The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was for my friend’s parents. Her mom commissioned a pencil drawing.

Wait, not true. The first time I drew a Hume Lake cabin, it was the boys staff cabin across the street from the girls staff cabin, in 1978. It was a present for my roommate, and I didn’t save a picture of the drawing.

Here is my friend’s cabin the first time I drew it (1995), and again after my friend allowed me to improve it (2017).

A few things have changed over the years, but none significantly alter the look. (Two trees in the foreground are history and now the room is metal.)

My friend’s cousins have become my friends too, and one year we were there for a birthday party for three of the cousins. I did three tiny paintings for birthday gifts.

My friend commissioned me to paint some ornaments for some of her cousins. They look awful here—wet, shiny, perhaps even incomplete.

One of the cousins sent me this photo the next year.

My most recent iteration of Hume Lake is in pencil, used in the 2026 calendar. This is the view from the footbridge over Ten Mile Creek, looking toward the Forest Service beach called Sandy Cove. (It doesn’t show—it’s behind the trees on the right.)

I have so many beautiful photos of the lake. . . I could paint it. Maybe I will someday. I know, “someday is not a day”, and “sometime is not on the schedule.”

Made the Deadline With Time to Spare

Moving left to right, top to bottom, identifying words whited out, dark photo taken with phone at the end of a day of drawing as the light was getting low.

Still working top to bottom, left to right.

Almost finished, except what should be done about the lower sections of nothingness?

How about some lupine? Good idea!

Here it is scanned and photoshopped into how it looks if you see the drawing in real life.

“Fast or Good”? Not fast this time. This drawing took me over twice as long as a picture of this size normally takes. A combination of three factors really slowed me down:

  • There were many many many photos to sort through and organize and study in order to make a cohesive and accurate drawing. This doesn’t take nearly as long when I am the photographer because I take the photos in a methodical fashion and am familiar with them.
  • There were no photos that showed the cabin clear in its entirety.
  • Many details were missing because there was a ton of stuff on the deck and in front, blocking the much of the cabin.

I relied on old photos, figured out guessed how things might look from a straight-on view, kept asking questions, and relied on 40+ years of experience drawing cabins.

The customer is happy, so I am too. We are assuming the recipient of the drawing will also be happy.

Now, back to Reimer’s.

Fast or Good?

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.

P.S. If you happen to recognize this cabin, stay quiet about it, PLEASE!

August is my Worst Favorite Month

My longest running drawing student Mae borrowed a photo of this cabin from me and drew it when she was brand new to drawing (but experienced at watercolor painting). She put in in an art show where local history buff and old friend Alan George insisted that it had been drawn by me, despite her name being on the drawing. That was a long time ago, but Mae and I still get a laugh out of remembering it.

I drew this one. It is the oldest cabin in Mineral King.

August always feels like the longest month to me. Endless heat. Sometimes wildfires start and then we have heat and smoke. Not my favorite month. To quote my niece when she was about 3, “It’s my worst favorite.”

Selling While Acting Semi-Retired

You may have noticed that I have been lollygagging quite a bit this year. I remember my dad describing himself as “semi-retired” when he was the age I am now. I think that is beginning to describe me. Go for a walk, hang out with some friends, organize some stuff, do a freebie job at church, organize some more stuff, do some errands… What? me work? maybe later… I’m busy.

However, due to the diligence of Stem & Stone along with Kaweah Arts, and a long-time reputation, there have been a few sales in the last several months. These are the ones I have remembered to keep track of.

This is probably the last time I will paint the Kaweah Post Office. It has been closed for several years, and it took several years for this painting to find a buyer.

I think these are the Sequoia Giganteas that was sold by Stem & Stone. If I forget to ask the seller for the inventory number, then I get confused as to which trees have sold. These 3 were actually very small: 4×12”, but I can’t make them proportionately small here on the blog.

I showed you these two while they were in progress. The first was 6×18”, painted for general inventory and the other 12×36”, a commission. I did the first as an experiment to see how it would work; the second one has more details as requested by the customer.

I don’t remember the circumstances of the sale of this one, titled Hiking Mineral King.

This 6×12″ was fun. I titled it Big Tree, Little Cow.

A newish cabin owner in Wilsonia discovered my book The Cabins of Wilsonia and was thrilled to find that the original drawing of her cabin was still available.

Then she discovered my website and found another pencil drawing to go with her cabin.

These sold last fall but I haven’t done a Sold post since last summer.

I thought that nothing was selling except notecards, but I was wrong. Maybe I should go back to the easels and stop with the lollygagging around. I can always put down my brushes and head out to pull weeds or take a walk or read a book (THANK YOU, READER/FRIEND LAURIE FOR ALL THE BOOK SUGGESTIONS!) while the paint is drying.

Sold in Spring: 17 Paintings, 3 Pencil Drawings

Sales were slow last year, mostly due to the fact of my three selling locations either being closed or taking a big hit of one sort or another.

This spring, things broke loose, opened up, took off. Have a look! (I may have forgotten some, because I fell out of the habit of keeping track.)

It was the usual blend of citrus, poppies, redwood trees, and Mineral King, with two of the river during peak run-off season. I do have a few other subjects, but these continue to be the most popular. The largest size painting was 11×14 10×30″; most of the buyers were either getting gifts or souvenirs. And people buy paintings of what they have experienced, so I do my best to keep things seasonally appropriate.

The pencil commission of the dog was from some old friends, and I am so touched that they still think of me when they have an art need. (“Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”)

The pencil commission of a cabin was the biggest thrill, because it came from a stranger who found me through the internet, and a thrill because drawing cabins in pencil is my strongest skill, the thing I enjoy the most. Paintings sell better, so I will continue to paint. One day I might actually have confidence in my abilities in that department. Always practicing, always learning, and hopefully, always improving. . .

Tomorrow: Nine Things Learned in May

Finished Pencil Drawing of a Cabin

I sure do know how to stretch a story out. . . have you noticed how many people use the cliché “long story short”, and then proceed to make a short story even longer? I am sort of doing that here, except I break it into chapters for you, because of another cliché that applies to many blog posts: TLDR (Too long, didn’t read).

Here is scanned Minnesota cabin drawing before I scrubbed it up on Photoshop Junior.

Here it is converted to gray scale with all the chuds erased and the paper color also erased. Chuds are marks on the scanning bed—this word came from the days when I worked in a frame shop. Sometimes after you’d get a piece of art all sealed up under the mat and frame and backing, with paper secured over the back, you’d flip it over and there would be a little something under the glass. My co-workers called these little somethings “chuds”.

A few more thoughts. It was a thrill to have a stranger find me over the interwebs, because people are always contacting me to say that my Google ratings are too low and that they can help me. (No thanks, you creepy Stalking Strangers; how did you find me on Google if my ratings are too low??)

The customer was a pleasure to deal with. She mailed a check when I told her that PayPal takes a bite, she replied quickly when I asked for more information, and she even marked up the photos so I would know who was on first and what was on second.

Alas, I learned something the hard way. A few months ago, I raised my prices for pencil drawings. It had been years (decades??), and it just seemed like a wise move. BUT I DIDN’T RAISE THEM ON MY WEBSITE. Sigh.

Someone could use a business manager, an administrative assistant, a Girl Friday, a right-hand man. Hmm, I guess that’s the problem: my man is left-handed!

P.S. If you are curious about my prices, you can see them here: Pencil Drawing Prices. I only show the smallest and the largest, because sometimes it is all just too much information and too much work. (I’d rather be drawing.)

Drawing a Cabin in Pencil

Which of the three sketches of a Minnesota cabin did the two sisters choose?

They chose A! (The exclamation mark is because that was the one I was hoping for.)

I cropped all the extraneous cold stuff. The sisters asked if I could show a bit more porch, and the best I could say was, “I’ll try.” There just wasn’t much to work with.

I spent an entire hour struggling to place the cabin so that there would be room for part of the wings on either side of the gable, in order to squeeze in a hint of the porch. It took a very long time to get the angles exactly right. This sounds excessive, but architectural subjects are not forgiving, and if you don’t get the skeleton down correctly, the parts don’t fit.

Finally, I was able to begin. (The picture of the drawing below is accidentally cropped—it actually has a 1″ margin around the image on this sheet of 9×12″ archival smooth expensive paper.)

Oh no! When I look at the photo I am using, the window size in the winter photo doesn’t quite match the summer photo that shows the gable end. Further, on the summer view of the gable end, there are 3 rows of shingles beneath the upper window.

Time out. I need some instructions, please!

So, I emailed the sisters.

What happened next??

Tune in tomorrow. . .

Cabinart = Art of a Cabin

Drawing cabins in pencil is the way I started my art business. Now I spend 90% of my artmaking time as an oil painter, so when I get asked to draw a cabin, I am really happy about it!

Someone from Minnesota found me on the internet and asked if I could draw her parents’ cabin in spite of not having clear photos of the entire structure. I told her to send them to me, and I’d see if I could make sense of the photos.

Want to see the pictures she sent?

I knew you’d be interested.

(Pay no attention to the purple lines)

These presented a real challenge. I did three little sketches and emailed the potential customer. She was delighted, and asked me to wait for an answer (yep, dealing with a deadline here) because she needed to consult with her sister.

Which one did they choose?*

Tune in tomorrow. . .

*If you read my blog on April 11, you know the answer to this question.

Another Interruption, This Time for Drawing

 

Once again, we interrupt our broadcast for this drawing.

Ever notice the annoyance of the English language, where a noun and a verb can be exactly the same word? And I didn’t actually mean “broadcast”, because we are in a series of posts about cabin life. This drawing fits the category of cabin life but it isn’t about cabin life; it’s about pencil drawing.

Get on with it, will ya??

An old friend (that seems to be where most of my work comes from, but new friends and young friends are welcome to commission me; even friends I haven’t met yet are welcome here) expressed an interest in a drawing from The Cabins of Wilsonia. 

Alas, it was gone.

We had a few options: 1. Oh well, sorry; 2. Buy another book, Sir, and rip out the page; 3. I can draw it for you again.

My wise friend chose option #3.

Have a look at the original photo that I used.

As always, working from a photo isn’t straightforward copying. Every photo has its indiscernible parts, because real life is messy. 

Because my friend was wanting the drawing from the book, I used that old drawing to help me make decisions. (I didn’t lie: although the original is gone, it’s still on my laptop.)

Then, I thought about it a bit more and decided that I ought to be able to do a better job now. That was 10 years ago, and I was cranking out those 272 (was that really the number??) drawings at a rapid pace. This time, there was no deadline. My friend’s only requirement was specific dimensions to go with another drawing, like a matched set.

Here is the other drawing.

And here is its new partner.

(The difference in darkness has something to do with the computer reproduction, not a change in pencils or pressure on the paper.)

This picnic table appears in the chapter called “Brewer”, which is the name of the road in Wilsonia depicted in that chapter. (I got clever that way.) The funny part is that I could not remember where this photo actually was, and I just put it on Brewer because I thought it looked good with the chaise lounge. 

Apparently my friend thought the same. He has actually had a strong influence over my art career, so this makes sense.

Thank you, DB!