Category Archives: Drawings

Doug, I Lost Your Email!

pencil drawing from the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia

This is a personal note to a friend, but you are welcome to read it. Duh. I posted it on the internet!

Dear Doug,

Thank you for using the Contact button on my blog. I was delighted to hear from you, and meant to set your email aside for a thoughtful response later. Instead, I deleted it. My excuses are that it was at the end of a long weekend away from the computer so there were many emails to read and sort AND in spite of continually changing my password, my email is being messed with by some unknown entity which causes me to manically delete messages (or maybe the unknown entity is deleting them. . .?)

Excuses aside, thank you for contacting me! I have been so curious about that little A-frame – is it Doug’s family cabin? Does he ever go there? Will he be up here when I am? Will he be disappointed that I only drew the funny lounge chair? Will he be pleased that anything from the cabin appears in the book?

My choices about what appears and what doesn’t are not based on historical significance. The book is about cabin life today in pictures (276 of them) and quotes by cabin owners and visitors. Not all cabins are included, because the goal is to show an overview album rather than a cabin-by-cabin directory. It is meant to show a balance of the typical and the unique.

I chose your chair, void of cushions, because it tells me a story about cabin life.

In other news, thank you for sending me a customer named Roger. He is gathering photos of a barn in Michigan for me to draw. (I’d rather he gather me a round-trip airfare, but no one does that.) Receiving a recommendation from such a fine artist as yourself really does my heart (and ego!) good.

Blessings to you, my old (as in long-time, not aged) friend,

Jana

Commissions of Wilsonia Cabins

I got to visit Wilsonia again. In spite of the book being finished on my end, there are some more cabins to draw. In fact, there are enough cabins that I could make another book.

Forget it.

There are 4-5 cabin folks who said they’d like me to draw their cabins. One chose the size and put down a 50% deposit. The others did not.

I took the photos anyway. In the olden days of film, I didn’t take photos until I had that deposit. Otherwise, it was just conversation.

Guess I’ve dropped my guard or my standards or my business-like demeanor. Maybe I’m more trusting. Maybe it just doesn’t matter if they change their minds.

These are cabins that only appear in the book as a detail or two. That is because they were too hard to photograph. With 200+ cabins to draw, it wasn’t necessary to do the really difficult ones.

Looks as if I might get to do some of the really difficult ones after all.

That’s fine. I love to draw. Have I mentioned that yet?

A Proof Copy

What’s a proof copy??

It’s an unbound copy of the book (The Cabins of Wilsonia) on paper. The pictures and type are the correct size but it is on oversized paper with trim lines.

I asked what I am looking for, since I provided camera ready copy. The answer was this:

“In the proofs, you should be looking to see if all elements at printing per your expectations. Are the running heads aligning correctly? Are the margins correct? Are the images in place correctly? Watch for font issues. Sometimes they do weird things and throw a symbol or wrong font in there. Otherwise, just make sure it looks good and meets your expectations. If you’re not sure of something be sure to ask. Once it’s printed it will be expensive to fix.”

Teeheehee – “Once it’s printed it will be expensive to fix.” (And did you notice the typo in the quote from the printer?)

No kidding! I’d have to pay to have it reprinted!

I found one little thing – there were 2 spaces between a couple of words. I thought about leaving it and then having a contest to see if anyone could find it. I changed my mind. It is now fixed.

I also noticed that the type is sort of biggish-looking. Since I know more folks who use reading glasses than those who do not, this is fine. It was intentional, but I didn’t know it would be sort of like an easy-reader look. Still, this is fine.

I thought it was going to be here by the end of September. Now I am not sure.

More will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Did I Make a Mistake?

While in Wilsonia, a cabin owner asked me if I could fix or change things on the original cabin drawings. I said a very confident and certain, “It depends”.

It depends on what it is, where it happens in the drawing, and if the drawing has been spray fixed so that it won’t erase or smear.

She told me I made a mistake on her cabin.

Really? I work from photos, so I think she meant that I didn’t portray her cabin as she sees it. I drew it as it appeared in the photos, and other than making me look fatter and more wrinkled than I already am, we know that cameras don’t lie.

See the white thing? It is an out-of-place shutter. It isn’t covering a window, because you can’t see a window from this angle. It is just there. It was in the photo and it is in the drawing. Did I make a mistake??

You can see a bit of a window on that back section of cabin in this photo without any visible shutters. It doesn’t show in the angle I drew for The Cabins of Wilsonia, an upcoming book of drawings of Wilsonia Cabins. (Thank you, Captain Obvious.)

I can draw out that white shutter and I will!

Not Yet Printed and Already Out-Dated?

There is one last drawing that needed scanning. I drew the cabin several years before I decided to make the book The Cabins of Wilsonia. The photo taken with my old digital camera just isn’t good enough for the book!

I called the customers/friends/cabin owners (all those roles and titles have blurred) to ask if I can borrow back the drawing. The wife and I discussed a trip to Clovis or a trip to Wilsonia. The drive to Wilsonia is prettier, and it is actually closer, so that’s how we did this.

It meant leaving Three Rivers at 9:30 and just blasting up and back quickly (Driving 245 down fast was FUN!!) because I needed to get to Exeter to work on the mural on Rocky Hill Antiques. After retrieving the drawing, I did a short drive around Wilsonia.

Look! The road signs used to look like this:

Now they look like this. AND I saw 2 roads that are NOT in the book – Kearsarge and Muir. it’s okay – there are no cabins on them. Probably used to be. . . sigh.

And this charming, mysterious, always boarded up, and never occupied cabin now looks like this:

Well! Who knew that the book would be outdated before it even goes to press??

More Decisions

Look at what I get to decide now:

1. How many books to print

2. What color of cover material

3. What to say on the About the Artist page

4. What to put on the cover of the book

5. What to do with the extra pages that will be necessary now that I’ve written the Acknowledgments and it ran to two pages and now I need to add seven more so there are multiples of eight (not sixteen, thank goodness) but really only six because I forgot about the About page. Phew. Breathe, chicky-babe, breathe!

I’m sure there will be more decisions ahead. Every time I think I’m almost there, the location of “there” changes! That is the world of self-publishing, and I’m THRILLED that I get to make the decisions instead of a publisher.

Doesn’t this deer look a little baffled? I can relate.

Original Pencil Cabin Drawings Available

As I began selling the original drawings for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia, I knew that the cabin owners should have first dibs on the drawings of their own cabins.

Since I am the one who chose which views and which cabins, there was a risk that some folks would not like my choices.

This means LUCKY YOU! These drawings are now available to anyone who wants to buy them. The link to my website with a shopping cart and Paypal is this.

The drawings vary in size from 6×7″ up to 7×10″ and range in price from $100-$150.

I feel pretty sure that there will be more. . . stay tuned!

Goodbye, Mitch

Wilsonia lost a friend. I didn’t know Mitch Rice for very long nor did I know him well. My husband was friends with him in high school, so Mitch was particularly warm, kind, welcoming, helpful, gracious and hospitable to me, a stranger with a camera and lots of questions. He was probably that way with everyone. I’ll miss him in Wilsonia.

Sold Cabin Drawings

Once I learned that the drawings for the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia did not have to be rescanned (GLORY HALLELUJAH!), I began contacting the cabin owners that I’ve met to offer them “first dibs” on the drawings of their cabins.

I only have contact information for about 37 of the cabin owners. (Like that “about 37”? That is sort of like saying “The time is around 12:08 p.m.”) So, if you suspect that your cabin may appear in the book, use the contact tab at the top of my blog and get in touch with me.

Meanwhile, have a look at a few completed drawings that now have a new home.

Sometime I’ll show you some of the drawings that the cabin owners decided they didn’t want to buy. I find it mildly interesting, and you might too. Or maybe I’ll give it some more thought and decide not to show those. More will be revealed in the fullness of time. . .

Confidence Weakened, Confidence Restored

There are over 200 cabins in Wilsonia. I have eddresses for about 40 of the cabin owners. Once in awhile I send out an email update on the project.

Now that the drawings can be sold, I emailed each of the folks whose eddress I have, folks I thought might like first dibs on buying the drawing(s) of their cabins.

I sent this drawing to a couple.

As I looked at it on my screen, I thought “HEY! Why are the lines on the roof crooked??” Then I hit Send anyway.

The next day I went through my photos to see how I could have made such an amateurish drawing mistake. Yikes, the humiliation.

This is what I saw:

The lines are crooked on the drawing because they are crooked on the roof. I bet you probably can’t even figure out what was bugging me here!

Allll righty then. Confidence restored.