Chance Encounter Near Mineral King

This oil painting, Long Way There, shows a tiny portion of the Mineral King Road. It is available for sale on my other website, www.cabinart.net.

After getting this blog repaired, I thought I’d post regularly. But, I didn’t have anything to say! Why not? Because I didn’t visit Wilsonia this summer, had no book signings, and nothing of significance in my little world of The Cabins of Wilsonia happened until this week when I had a chance encounter.

I was driving down the Mineral King Road, coming home from my own cabin, when a red car caught up to me. As is the custom with mountain driving etiquette, I pulled over. The red car passed, and I stayed a respectful distance behind, enjoying the chance to follow a good mountain driver.

A little further down the road, the red car pulled over for me to pass. I pulled alongside, put down my passenger window, and the driver also opened her window. I complimented her on her skillful handling of the very winding narrow road and said I’d been enjoying following her. She thanked me, said they pulled over to look at a rock and that she would enjoy following me for awhile.

When we were almost to the bottom of the hill, I saw a propane truck heading our way. I took the nearest turnout, making room for the red car behind me, and while we were waiting for the truck to pass, the passenger got out of the red car and approached my passenger window.

I opened the window, and he said, “You are the Cabinart artist! We are from Wilsonia!”

Oh my. CABNART is my license plate. I’m glad I was a courteous driver that day. I may have said something brainless such as, “What are you doing in my mountains??” (probably not quite that stupid, but possibly close. . .)

I had met these folks and didn’t recognize them in a completely out-of-context situation. We had a nice quick chat, I recommended a place for lunch in Three Rivers, and we were soon on our way.

What a hoot!! Tulare County is very small, and it is impossible to remain invisible or anonymous.

Forgetting

These are the things I’ve been forgetting lately:

To write posts for this blog
The password to log into this blog to write a post.
To tell this blog’s readers what is taking place in the ongoing saga of The Cabins of Wilsonia

The Redbud Festival at the Three Rivers Veterans Memorial Building is this Saturday and Sunday, May 12 and 13. Saturday, 10-5, Sunday 10-4.

You can buy The Cabins of Wilsonia at that show.

IF you know you are coming and know how many books you’d like, and you let me know in advance, I’ll be sure to bring enough. Otherwise, I might have to hand you my money purse, ask you to watch the booth, and trot home to get a few more books! (Had a similar situation a few years ago – handed my money thing to Chuck and Penny and said, “Watch my booth – I’ll be right back!” They sold a painting for me.)

There are also plenty of the original drawings remaining.

Bench on cabin deck on Sierra Drive

Learning From Wilsonia, Part V

While working on The Cabins of Wilsonia, I took 2 friends for a short driving tour of the cabins. One of them laughed at me when I said for the fifth or sixth time, “This is my favorite cabin!” She wondered how many cabins could possibly be my favorite.

There was a pattern. All of my favorites had shingle siding. Have a look at a few:

Look what happened to my own drawing studio as a result:

My studio as it looked while I was working on the book.

My studio as it now looks.

If you would like to see my studio and 14 others in Three Rivers alone, Saturday and Sunday, April 14-15, is the South Valley Artists Studio Tour.

For tickets: http://www.artsconsortium.org/sovast

Learning From Wilsonia, Part IV

While self-publishing The Cabins of Wilsonia, I learned new skills, which equipped me for new experiences, added fantastic people to my life, and discovered some new places.

Well duh. Wilsonia itself was a new place in my life. The first time I remember going there is the first time I went to spend some time in order to decide if this was a project worth pursuing. And it is right here in Tulare County, where I have lived my entire life, minus a few misguided years during college.

These are the two cabins where I stayed while becoming familiar with Wilsonia’s roads, cabins and people

I had no idea how big the place was! 212 cabins, 29 roads, 100 acres!

It gave me the chance to become more familiar with Kings Canyon National Park, particularly the Grant Grove area. Most of my mountain time is spend in Mineral King, on the Sequoia end of the parks.

Learning From Wilsonia, Part III

Self-publishing The Cabins of Wilsonia led me to new skills, experiences, people, and places.

As with most things in life, it comes down to people. Think about jobs you’ve had: if you are like me, you have probably learned that it is better to do difficult and unpleasant tasks with great people than to do good jobs with awful people.

Publishing The Cabins of Wilsonia was a great project with fantastic people. I took very few people photos while working on the book, but here is a little peek at a few of the folks who influenced, assisted, and added joy to the project.

Learning From Wilsonia, Part II

The new skills I acquired by publishing The Cabins of Wilsonia led to these experiences:

Editing, photo-editing, designing, and publishing with Louise A. Jackson Trail of Promises, the account of a stock party’s attempts to complete the John Muir Trail.
Designing, drawing and publishing five coloring books for grownups: Heart of the Hills, Heart of Mineral King, Heart of Exeter, Heart of the Parks, and Heart of Agriculture.
Editing, photo-editing, designing, and publishing with Louise A. Jackson the second edition of The Visalia Electric Railroad: Stories of the Early Years.

Almost all of those books are available for sale on the Books page of my other website.( It is slow to load because of all the images – don’t give up!)

Learning From Wilsonia, Part I

Publishing The Cabins of Wilsonia filled my life with new skills, experiences, people, and places.

Look at this list of skills:

Using a laptop – before this project, my sole computer experience was on desktops.
Preparing pencil drawings using a scanner, a real scanner, not just a bargain print/fax/scan/copy thing that sounds like a deal until it needs ink (a week after you buy it).
Adobe Photoshop Elements – Adobe is completely non-intuitive to this Apple-girl. Elements is the “easy” version of Photoshop. . . fall down laughing.
Adobe InDesign – even now, seven years after beginning the book, each time I open up InDesign to begin a new project, it feels almost as if I have never seen the program before. I say that I “learned” to use it, but those lessons were hard won and hard to hang onto.

Next time, you’ll see a list of what these skills led me to.

The Blog Awakens From a Coma

The Cabins of Wilsonia was published and arrived in December, 2014. After about a year, this blog went into a coma. A series of phishy sounding emails arrived, which caused me to make one of those long-waits-on-hold type of phone calls, and as a result, this blog has been revived!

Just over 3 years after receiving the book, I’m happy to resume writing about it.

I sold enough to cover my expenses; thank you for asking.

Many of the original drawings remain; again, thank you for asking. You may email me at cabinart at cabinart dot net (written that way for web security purposes) if you are interested in a particular cabin drawing. Why email? Because the contact form is not working, and I’d rather write a blog post than make another one of those long-waits-on-hold type of phone calls.

(Yes, I assume a great deal about the thoughts of my readers. Don’t worry–I am not a mind-reader.)

There are still books available, now at the bargain price of $50, including tax and mailing (in the USA only). This is the page for that transaction.

The process of publishing the book was HUGE. It took four years, and in another post I will list the things that came out of the experience.

Pencil Drawing of Wilsonia Cabin

The book The Cabins of Wilsonia is completed, published and for sale.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (where did that saying come from?), I still draw cabins in pencil. (I oil paint too, but that’s a different subject on a different blog, cabinart.net, a blog that covers all aspects of my art business).

Some folks liked my work in the book, but it only contained a drawing of their chimney. They asked me to draw their entire cabin.

It took us over a year to work out the details of what they wanted, We began with a few sketches, which then needed to be discussed and revised.

There were details they wanted to be sure appeared in the drawing that were just too small to appear in the sketches. When they were convinced that I knew all the little things that mattered to them, I was able to begin.

I work from left to right, top to bottom, to avoid smearing.

And finally, finished!

We were all very pleased with the outcome!

Wilsonia Book For Sale

Sometimes I get emails or phone calls asking where to buy the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia.

The 2 short answers are:

Amazon
From me

Amazon is self-explanatory if one shops online. Here is the link. The Cabins of Wilsonia

“From me” has options:

Mail a check to my P.O. Box and I will mail a book to you. (P.O. Box 311, Three Rivers, CA 93271)
Send money via Paypal to cabinart@cabinart.net, making sure to include your shipping address, and I will send you a book.
See me at a show/boutique/presentation/festival/arts and crafts fair and buy the book there.
Use the Paypal Add To Cart button on the Book For Sale page.
Call me and I will tell you all the options. (559-561-7606)
Encounter me by accident somewhere, and I will pull a book out of the trunk of my car for you. Checks or cash, but not plastic. (And I drive a stick shift and don’t have a microwave either.)

The book is $81, which includes tax. I will pay the mailing costs, and no, I don’t charge a “handling fee”. (Doesn’t it bug you when a company says “free shipping” and then tacks on a “handling fee”?)

Here is another handy Paypal Add To Cart button so you don’t even have to test out any of those other methods.