Most of last week was spent hunched over the giant magnifying light in my studio at the drawing table.
This is the result.
Now I am waiting for a few more instructions.
One Bite at a Time
Or, if you read Anne Lamott, one bird at a time*. That’s the way I will accomplish this large complicated custom pencil drawing.
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.
Custom Complicated Collage
When a group of words begin with the same letter, it’s called “alliteration”. Did you know that? Do you care?
The owner of this cabin has hired me to draw a 14×18″ collage that incorporates many different views and pieces of her unique and well-designed place.
After several versions, this is the one that pleases her the most.
Can you use the word “mayonnaise” in a sentence?
How about this: “Man-aze a lotta stuff in ‘at pitcher!” (Say it out loud; you will get it in a minute.)
In addition to messing around with words, I do love to draw. Good thing, eh?
Mineral King, Another Person’s Story
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.
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.)
Pencil Drawing of a Cabin
“Cabin Art” or “Cabinart”* began with pencil drawings of cabins. It it a treat to be able to draw cabins when those jobs come in.
Someone saw a copy of my book The Cabins of Wilsonia and asked if I could draw her parents’ cabin, working from emailed photographs.
You betcha!
I showed it to you a bit earlier while in progress. I gave it my best effort to work from the customer’s photos and a sketch, and then sent her a scan of the almost finished drawing to her. She asked if I could add something that didn’t really show in the photos, a procedure that is almost always dicey. Since she communicated clearly throughout the project, I was willing to try.
Got it!
We talked about possibly having cards made in the future, so she paid the fee to do the digitization. Now you get to see what it looks like before and after getting digitally prepared. Something about scanning a drawing picks up every little anything that appears in and on the paper. Can you see the difference?
*It puzzles me that as a Typo-psycho, I never figured out how the name of my business should be spelled.
Drawing a Cabin I’ve Never Seen
With much of the custom art that I do, I don’t get to actually see the places in person. This is less tricky than in the olden days of film cameras and waiting for pictures to get developed and then put in the mail.
Someone I’ve never met saw a copy of my book The Cabins of Wilsonia, went to my website, and used the contact button to ask me if I could draw her parents’ cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
(Obviously I needed my website redesigned to emphasize the fact that I make art people can understand of places and things they love at prices that won’t scare them – i.e. CUSTOM ART!)
As usual, I said I’d need to see the photos first. She sent me several.
The customer sent me more information.
I began the drawing, even though I didn’t have all the answers yet.
Finally, I took these photos and sent them to her. She was thrilled and I was relieved.
I asked again about the left end gable because it shows in the drawing, and I want it to be right. She responded immediately with this immensely helpful photo.
Doing custom art of places I’ve never been to requires many photos, conversations, and sketches. It is a mystery and a puzzle, and when I am on the right track, it is enormously satisfying to grant the customer’s wishes and exceed her expectations.
Meanwhile, may I interest you in a copy of The Cabins of Wilsonia?
Completed Cabin Drawing
I learned that the cabin owner was going to be present in Mineral King, so I put the “pedal to the metal” and finished the drawing late one evening in the studio in order to deliver it in person. The customer was very pleased and surprised.
There is a great deal of satisfaction and relief when I have a chance to redraw something from my Primitive Era. (That’s what my dad told me to to call my earlier artwork.)
Hockett Meadow, Two Pencil Drawings
The customer allowed me to put color in the flag, a technique that I am very partial to. I added smoke, scanned it, and did the Photoshop clean-up.
As I was adding the grassy meadow to the foreground, I was thinking about the first time I drew the Hockett Meadow Ranger Station. It was part of a notecard set called “Backcountry Structures”.
Back in the olden days (in the 1980s), people used pens to handwrite notes in cursive, put them in envelopes, address them, LICK a stamp to put on the envelope, and then place into a real mailbox for people in other parts of the country to receive.
How quaint. Those were definitely kinder, gentler, slower, more personal times.
Now, hold onto your hats, Dear Blog Readers, because I am going to show you something frightening.
Your Central California artist needs to keep reminding herself that it is good to be humble.
Growth is good.
People were very kind in the olden days and hadn’t learned all that anonymous internet rude behavior yet.
If you bought art from me back then, THANK YOU!!
Old Drawing, New Cards
In 1992, I did this commissioned pencil drawing of a Mineral King cabin. The one who owns it sent me a photo of the card she had left from an earlier order.
I tried to turn it into something that would print as a decent card. This was not acceptable.
The customer said she still had the original, and it wasn’t even in a frame, so I was able to scan it (after touching it up a little bit, because I draw better now (as one would hope, 27 years later).
Then, I messed with it on Photoshop Elements, and voila!
Printing has changed so radically from the old days. I’m thankful that the ordering and reprinting process is accessible from my laptop these days.
Lucky on Amazon?
On Friday’s post I said that the only way to get a copy of The Cabins of Mineral King, by Jane Coughran and me, published by Cabinart Books in 1998, is to get lucky on eBay or on Amazon.
Then I decided to look for myself. Nothing on eBay, and this is what was on Amazon. Whoa. Here is a screen shot of the first listings:
Then I went down to the more expensive books. Check this out:
Now that is what I would call a Peculiar Sight.
I contacted the last 2 sellers on the listing to ask them if they really and truly meant to list the book for that price. I’ll let you know if I hear back. . . (and yes, I signed my name and told them I thought I did a nice job on the illustrations but their prices seemed a bit high.)
P.S.The seller called FastShip replied:
Jana, Thank-you for bringing this to my attention. We have about 70K books.
They went on with a lengthy explanation of how books are priced and how some fall through the cracks, but they didn’t say if they were planning to reprice the book.