No time for jibber-jabber. There’s a big drawing that needs a ton of time!
So much measuring.*
Oooh, those tiny letters.
See you tomorrow.
*OF COURSE I MEASURE! If it took tools to build it, it takes tools to draw it.
Reimer’s Candies and Ice Cream is a destination and a landmark in Three Rivers, California. It is now on its fourth owner in my lifetime, and it is just as busy as ever, just as popular, just as magnetic.
I drew it for the second owners, people with the name of Reimer, who bought it from the Huffakers, the folks who started the business. The Reimers commissioned me and then used my drawing on a thank you card to include in every box of candy that they shipped out. Owners #3 did the same.
By the time owner #4 came along, the drawing was too many generations away from the original to look good any more, and the printer I used to use is most likely out of business.
We tried to foof it up, to make it good enough to use, but alas, not even Photoshop was up to the pixelation and moray patterns that resulted in printing from a print that had been printed from a print. . .
When owner #4 asked me how to get more cards printed, I suggested that he hire me to draw it again. He agreed, saying that some changes have been made to the property, so I took photos from as many angles as I could manage, trying to arrive when the light was decent but before the crowds.
After studying the photos, I decided a new angle would give it a new look, and did this sketch.
The owner understood that it was just a rough sketch and knows that I can actually draw, so once he approved the sketch, I began.
First, I figured out the main dimensions, which is lots of math and measuring.
Then I moved into getting it laid out on the paper. (This is 14×17”.)
Finally, I began shading in the upper left hand corner so that my hand won’t drag the graphite all over the paper.
Then I schlepped my self back to the house to collapse in a chair and wait for the most totally excellent husband, AKA Trail Guy, to tell me that dinner was ready. As is often the case, I spent the evening questioning my ability to accomplish this drawing, to capture all the detail, to do as good a job as when I could see without a magnifying glass over the table.
As is often the case, I also questioned my pricing, but this is Tulare County, and I’m not about to “gouge” my customers! What constitutes gouging? I dunno. Locals say my prices are high; people from far away say they are low.
Maybe owner #4 will provide some dark chocolate with the final payment.
A faraway friend got a thrill and texted me about it.
She was in the downtown area of her town, went into a gift shop, and was floored to see two pencil drawings of Mineral King. Upon recognizing them, she took some photos and texted me.
These were reproduction prints which used to be my “bread and butter” type art. It was almost automatic when I finished a new drawing to get it printed, sign, number, package, and sell it.
I guess someone who lives 700 miles away got tired of these two drawings and somehow they ended up in this gift shop.
That’s okay. I get tired of the art hanging on my walls and rotate it out. Unless it is my own painting. Wait, I do pull those off the walls if they seem appropriate for a particular show or a potential customer has expressed an interest.
The shop owner was quite thrilled; having someone recognize the subject and the artist validated her selection of merchandise.
Thank you, ‘70s Ranger Daughter Mari for discovering this “vintage cabin art”!! And thank you for getting in touch to tell me the story and sharing your photos!
I got to know someone from New Jersey when I attended college in San Diego. Most of us said “beach”, but our New Jersey suite mate said “shore”. Actually I think she said “sho-ah”.
The owners of my pier drawing asked me to draw some “shore birds”, but I think they are both native Californians. That’s okay, I knew what they meant.
I got ahead of myself, and stopped drawing to ask this question: “Do you want me to make them exactly the same as in the one you saw on my blog, or may I have freedom to move the birds around and add some more?”
The answer came back thus: “I didn’t save the picture from the blog, so I can’t answer you precisely- however I think the artist’s choice would be most satisfactory. Just not too busy – the wave action in the pier drawing is kind of serene, so the shore birds might reflect the same.”
So, I changed my drawing a bit by erasing a few birds from this first version:
Then I darkened a few things, added some rocks, and finished the wet sand.
This will look excellent with the pier. Let me demonstrate here for you to admire.
I sure have a hankering to go to the beach. Or the shore. Even the sho-ah would be amazing.
I don’t remember what pier this is. It is somewhere on the Central California coast.
I might be at jury duty today. After I got the summons, I sent in the excuse form which said that I am unavailable most months of the year except July, August, and December, when I am not teaching drawing lessons.
The county immediately sent me a summons for July 1. Oh boy.
Last year some fine folks of impeccable taste bought this pencil drawing. A few months later, they saw this drawing on my blog and decided it would be a nice companion to the pier.
It would, but whoever owns it would likely disagree. Fortunately for these fine folks of impeccable taste, I accept commissions; fortunately for me, they would like a new drawing, this time in the same shape and size as the pier.
They sent the dimensions, said “no rush”, and I started immediately. I love the beach and by drawing this, it feels somewhat as if I am spending time there. Besides, another two commissions are stuck in Waiting Customer Approval or Waiting for a Deposit mode.
I laid out the size, and determined where the horizon belongs. I think that the 2 photos on the left were what I worked from last time. Those were taken with a film camera, so it’s been awhile…
I now have many more and better quality beach bird photos, so i started experimenting with placement and sizes. This time I carried it outside into the hot bright sun to photograph.
Unsure of bird placement other than that one Jonathan Livingston, I jumped to the sky and water. S’posed to be working top to bottom, left to right so I don’t smear, so shading the birds would have been premature.
It was too hot outside, so now the photos will be a little crummier for you.
Quite an assortment of birds.
That drawing is a lousy print of a lousy photograph of the earlier drawing. You can see I’ve got quite a stack of photos to refer to
Suddenly I got nervous. I forgot to ask my customers a very important question before beginning: Do you want the same birds as in the previous drawing, or can I do a new assortment?
Hmmm, I might end up with a beach bird drawing to store in my flat files and then need to start over.
Every single custom job I do has all sorts of ways I can mess up. You’d think that after this many years, I’d know of all the possible ways to avoid this sort of hazardous situation. You might need to have another think.
I really like the assortment, the big crashing waves, the flock in the sky. If it doesn’t suit my customers, maybe I’ll frame it and keep it anyway. I miss the pier drawing, because it hung by my drawing table for several years before I finally took it to the gallery where it sold.
On a recent hot day, as I was preparing to go down the hill to teach drawing lessons, the gallery curator texted me to say the A/C wasn’t working. So, I immediately texted (almost) all my students* and cancelled.
We had some chitchat, and one of my most motivated students said she had started a new drawing on her own of a golf ball on a tee. (I tell all my students to pick a subject they love because they’ll be looking at it for a long time.) She sent me the photo she planned to work from, and before I had a chance to stop and think, I found myself texting some instructions to her.
I told her to not make the drawing too small, because it would be hard to make all the dimples, that all the dimples would have soft edges, and to draw a grid on the sphere of the golf ball so the dimples can be lined up. Then I drew an example and texted it to her, because a picture is worth a thousand words.
I’ve had a pencil drawing commission in the conversation stage for a couple of months. The customer is in the midst of selling her home and moving away, so she’d like a pencil drawing of it. She has sent me multiple photos, and we’ve had several conversations so I am getting an understand of what is important to her.
On my unexpected day off from teaching drawing lessons, I finally had a chance to compile and peruse all her photos. Instead of giving her a bunch of options, I sent her this sketch, which I think is the best possible way to gather all her important things into one piece of art.
Finally, I pulled out a drawing that I started a few weeks ago and had a wonderful (almost) quiet afternoon with my pencils. The little wall unit A/C roars, but it is preferable to being in the gallery without any A/C.
*Getting a new phone meant that some texting groups didn’t land on my phone and I am SO EMBARRASSED that I forgot a longtime student and good friend.
P.S. I FINISHED THE DRAWING THE NEXT DAY.
P.P.S. I had the opportunity to take a couple more photos for clarifying. It was a waste of film (JUST KIDDING—What’s film??) because the drawing is finished, and no one cares about whether or not things are exactamundo. Here are the photos anyway, and now that a little time has passed, I see the unfortunate alignment of the stove prop and the teakettle spout. Phooey.
This is Hume Lake as seen from the footbridge that crosses Ten-Mile Creek on the end of the lake toward the dam. For the past eight summers, I’ve had an idyllic reunion with a childhood friend at her Hume cabin. It is modest and rustic, and our times there are a real bright spot in life.
“Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.
That’s a song that we sometimes sing together, especially when we are out in a rowboat on the lake. We also have been known to sing “When Sammy Put the Paper on the Wall”, “Kookaburra”, and a round with 3 different parts including “Fish and Chips and Vinegar”.
You’d want ear plugs if you were with us.
Having finished the oil painting commission, priced paintings and cards to sell at Silver City, all this while believing that I have finished enough paintings for the entire summer (possibly delusional about that), it was time to consider how to next spend my work time.
I pulled weeds at church (not work), oiled the siding on the front of the studio (sort of work), learned to use the new scanner at a minimal level (work requiring enormous patience), worked on art for the 2027 calendar (the best kind of work), and went to a county supervisor candidate meet-up where I had a conversation that led to a pencil commission (marketing work).
The requested subject, Reimer’s, to be redrawn in pencil, is here in Three Rivers. Iit will take a few photo sessions to find the right light without the parking lot full of scene-blocking cars. The customer has granted permission to show progress on the blog.
The original drawing is in a frame somewhere in someone’s home (I hope it isn’t stashed in a storage unit), the printshop that originally printed this on cards is out of business, and the store is under new ownership with some changes. Hence, it is time for a new drawing.
In addition, someone who hired me to edit a very long paper/potential book/article/essay something sent me photos of his garden at its peak and requested a collage type oil painting. I’ve only done collages with pencil, but I am willing to try this design approach in oil paint.
After studying the 10 or so photos that he sent, it became apparent that my laptop screen isn’t up for the task—it’s just too small. So, I put them all on a document, turned it black and white (because my printer isn’t really capable of printing in color without cleaning the heads, running test patterns, and then replacing ink that got used up doing those tasks) and printed it out.
Next, I made a list of everything that is important to the customer. (He is very good at communicating—hence, the successful editing project.)
As I tiptoed ahead on this challenging project, I realized that this is my chance to not be stupidly unbusinesslike. Often I get so caught up in a challenge that I don’t charge for all the extra work, and I rarely remember to get a deposit. This time I let the customer know that the job is in the Think Tank and that I was attaching an invoice for $100 nonrefundable deposit for the design work. It will be applied to the painting, size to be determined.
After work I came home and cleaned up the tail and guts of a squirrel that Tucker caught, nibbled on, and left for Jackson and Pippin to finish. It was seriously disgusting, so instead of showing you that, let’s look at a pencil drawing of a completely intact squirrel.
No more confusion* over “Lake Kaweah” or Kaweah Lake: here is an official sign.
The Mineral King Preservation Society organized a tour of the dam that creates Lake Kaweah. I have been there, but it was before the new fusegates were built in 2004. The purpose of that previous trip was to get photos for this drawing. That’s story for another blog post sometime. Maybe.
We met in the parking lot at the Lemon Hill Visitor Center. The name must be a nod to Lemon Cove, since the dam is closer to Lemon Cove than to Three Rivers. This photo looks over the marina where all the houseboats live, toward the dam. As usual, the lake is very full this time of year.
We drove back to the highway, headed downhill, then turned below the dam and went through a couple of security gates with cameras, to park near the tower.
We all loved the views in spite of the hazy quality of the air. Haze? Smog? Don’t ask, don’t tell.
Our guide was very very new and didn’t know a whole lot. We were all very curious about the bootprints imprinted on 4 concrete pads below us, and the 4 red bootprints under shallow water on the lake side and the 2 red bootprints on the spillway side.
These are the fusegates. Each of the six is a little different level, so that in the case of a giant flood, only one gate at a time will open and get pushed aside. This ensures that the water flooding downstream will go in a somewhat regulated fashion rather than all at once. (I learned this from a knowledgeable fellow tourist.) The guide thought that the gates get tested every so often to be sure that they will open if there is a catastrophic flood.
There was a hawk with a nest on something that looked as if it was constructed for that purpose.
I loved the views on the downstream side of the dam. Dry Creek Road is over there, heading up into the hills and eventually into the mountains.
Here are 2 more photos of the tower. I don’t know what purpose it serves; it has a radioactive symbol on it by the door, which we were not invited to go through. Maybe it is a place for a couple of people to hide in the event of a nuclear bomb. I don’t know who those 2 unlucky people would be.
After the tour, our MKPS organizer invited us to send her any questions that she will pass along to the normal tour guide. OF COURSE I HAD QUESTIONS!! (Are you surprised by this?)
1. How long would it take to go from minimum pool to full, if there was a huge storm? Maybe a better way to phrase this is: What is the shortest amount of time it has taken in the past for the lake to fill?
2. Why is there a radioactive symbol on the tower?
3. What purpose does the tower serve?
4. Was that round wooden platform near the tower built specifically for a hawk to build its nest?
5. Is the water ever used to generate electricity?
6. Why the red footprints (4 on the lake side and 2 on the spillway side) and the ones pressed into the concrete squares??
More will be revealed in the fullness of time. Maybe…. it seems that the more ways there are to communicate, the less likely that responses appear. I do feel quite hopeful about this set of questions.
*Provided I can remember because it is possible that the confusion is embedded too deeply in my memory.