Roller Coaster 1983

The industrial look also applies to structures for amusement and play, such as this roller coaster and water wheel at a long-gone amusement park south of Boston. Paragon Park was a summer destination for many Boston-area folk who couldn't afford a nice house on the beach or in the countryside. The park, when open, was always full of families and noise. In the early 1980s, while I was still living in Cambridge, Mass, I used to visit Paragon Park with a roller-coaster-obsessed friend. I would make drawings while she rode the coaster, over and over again. I only rode it once and that was enough. 

You can see that I was just as fascinated by industrial patterns back then as I am now. The wooden framework for the coaster resembled the steel frameworks on the mills and refineries and railroads that I love so much. This coaster was in danger of being demolished when Paragon Park closed in 1985 but it was saved and moved to the "Six Flags America" theme park in Mitchellville, Maryland, not very far northeast of Washington, DC. It is still there, going strong.

Tech pen black ink on sketchbook page, about 8 1/2" x 7 1/2", August 21, 1983.

Industrial Patterns 12: Steelpunk

A Bessemer Converter is a grand metal pot in which steel used to be made, before more modern techniques made it obsolete. Cold air is injected into its lake of molten metal so that the impurities can be burned off. This burning process creates a fabulous eruption of flame and sparks, and what is left is made into steel. This little sketch shows part of the base of a Bessemer converter. I wish I could have seen one in action. The patterns on the right of the drawing are not part of any machine but were made in steel-clad Photoshop.

Brown tech pen ink on sketchbook page, 3 1/2" x 2 1/4", September 12, 2015.

Diptych Framed

Remember earlier in July of this year, I finished an "Angelic Portrait" of the kneeling lady in a blue robe. I presented it here but it was unfinished, since it didn't have the frame that would allow it to be folded together like a book. Now the portraitee's husband has finished creating the folding frame and here it is. She will keep the open Diptych in her devotional area among other angel portraits by me and some colorful unlit candles. 

Maybe you might want to be painted among your holy beings and angelic patrons? It was quite a job creating Heaven as well as Philadelphia (seen out the window, minus papal visitor).

Diptych is acrylic on hardboard, 2 x 10" x 15", July 1395. Klyptych for a closer view.

Industrial Patterns 10

This is MY steel mill, an engine of the corporation that bears my name and has made my fortune. Pyracantha Steel! I know every strut and girder, every furnace and every flame that powers the making of our built environment. Do not forget that without metals, without my steel, you would be living in wood-framed huts around an impoverished dusty square. I am always striving to improve, ever-vigilant to the moves of my competition. There is nothing more satisfying to me than the orange glow of a fresh-molded ingot. And it all comes to life at the stroke of my technical pen.

Brown technical pen ink on sketchbook page, 4 1/4" x 3", September 10, 2015. It depicts some of an oxygen furnace and a lime kiln.

Crushed Again

Some weeks ago I visited the "Crushed Cellars" winery where I did a rather messy ink drawing of the vines and road in their front vineyard, along with two of the chickens who wander around the property. My first colorizing for this drawing was in Photoshop but I always intended to properly color the image in colored pencils. I did this a few days ago and here it is. In this case I like my colored pencils better than the richer colors of Photoshop. The pencils have "leads" of wax and you can blend the colors on the page as if it were a harder species of oil pastel. So you can be Crushed again with softer color.

Prismacolor, Derwent, and many many other makes of colored pencil from my extensive studio set, September 2015.

Sticky Creature

Do any of you recognize this item? It's a biomorphic tripodal hand weapon from Warhammer 40,000, right? Or it's a Steampunk gadget for Dr. Basket Lightning in his direct current laboratory. Yes? No, this thing is a glue gun, as many of you in the graphics world know well. It melts sticks of plastic, which are inserted in an anal opening to the rear, and when melted comes out of its beak as clear, hot...drool. Hence the name I give to it, "The Drooler."   It does have a rather biological form, with its paw-like support tail in the back, and the large trigger which suggests that it is a male creature. I use this to stick mat borders on mounted board, thus preparing a print for life inside a frame. While I am lining up the layers of cardboard, the Drooler sits waiting in anthropomorphic patience, dropping plastic drool into a little pile. When I take the thing in hand, I squeeze the trigger, and the glue comes out. I try not to touch or drop the hot glue anywhere on my skin, because it can sting quite a bit. But it's fun to play with when it's cooled and dried. Y'see, even art prep can be fun.

Brown ink on sketchbook page, changed to black in Photoshop, about 4" x 2 1/2", September 8, 2015.

Are you ready for more of this? ORANGENESS, my new humor blog, is about to go live! I've been thinking about doing humorous blog writing for some time and why not now when the world we used to know has been turned into "information pudding." "Art By-Products" will remain just as it is, and at times will share the same material but I hope to bring you new chuckles every week or so at the Orange. Stay tuned, devotees.

Dagny

I've done a number of Ayn Rand illustrations over the years but no modern image of the heroine Dagny Taggart, the train mistress. Had I continued my graphic novel version of "Atlas Shrugged" I would have drawn her in the second chapter as she rides one of her own trains through the night. I still would like to see a graphic novel version of "Atlas" but they made a movie trilogy instead. I just ordered it so I will be able to see what other image makers did with Dagny. There are reasons for my fascination with an author whom everybody I know hates and finds repulsive, but I'm not going to do a Rand Rant here. I really love trains. One of these days I'm going to do a railfan thing and visit a freight train depot and do some drawings, if it's legal to do so. I'd like to learn more about railroads. Why? Because they are awesome. Where is Dagny when we need her? 

Brown tech pen ink on sketchbook page, some shading in Photoshop. 3 1/2" x 2 1/4", September 7, 2015.