No. 210: Locomotive Breath (Erie Lackawanna 2586)

No. 210, Erie Lackawanna No. 2586, in its second frame.

No. 210 is unique among the collection, for it is a pen and ink rendering.

That's right: Dip the pen in India ink and try to keep a steady hand so that it doesn't blotch, run or smear.

Finding a complete set of Speedball brand pens and tips at a garage sale was all that I needed for motivation. My daughter Emily had a jar of black ink, which I was allowed to borrow.

This is not the first time that I have drawn this locomotive, an Erie Lackawanna EMD GP35. EMD means Electro-Motive Division of General Motors (a division since sold).  EL 2586 was built in September 1965 -- on my fourth birthday.  
I first drew this big engine in 1979, in an art room at Warren Western Reserve High School. The ink and pens had to stay in the class, so it took me several weeks to finish. The paper was manila, and there was a yellow matte inside of a black frame.

It looked something like the photo above, black and white and gray. 

The picture hung around in bedrooms, basements and closets for many years.  Somehow it got warped and wet and had to be removed from the frame. From there it went into a drawer and eventually wound up at my dad's house.  

 

When he moved again, he offloaded the drawing to me.  And when I moved into my second house, it moved too. It spent several years in an old dresser drawer downstairs, only to be destroyed in a basement flood and tossed unceremoniously into a contractor-sized trash bag and hauled away. 

It didn't really bother me much at the time, and I only recently remembered its demise. It had been 30 years old, and it had been a long time since I was into chasing trains.

But the memories are good and clear as a bell.  I can hear it, in fact: A steady clanging as these noisy monsters wound their way through Warren, Ohio.  I can hear the air horn, too -- just deafening. Huge rusty wheels that were chrome-shiny where they met the rails.   The smell of diesel fuel and the grease that would soak the stones between the rails and ties. And creosote on that wood.

We would get so dirty, my brother Gerry and I.

A GP35 is not a sexy locomotive.
It is not gorgeous like the EMD E8 drawn here for Gerry: http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/search?q=last+sexy+bullet
All of the lines on this bad boy are harsh. It's angular and rugged and built to haul ass. It's a workhorse, and many versions of these are still around.

I found as I inked the paper that those old art lessons came back to me. Don't press hard, pull don't drag the pen, keep steady. Luckily there were no ink explosions. There are some smears and smudges, mostly hidden in the lines and shading. If you look in the lower left, there's a droplet of ink. There's no erasing ink. It is "Permanence 'A'".

I worked from front to back. First the nose in black lines, then shades of gray. The grays were achieved by adding ink or water to Dixie cups, for lighter and darker results.  When the black lines would run under the watery grays, I would blot the paper with a handkerchief. I ruined one good white handkerchief, but it was worth it.

Above, you can see the progression of the nose.
Below, a Dixie cup full of ink and a cup of black coffee at 6 a.m.

I wrestled hard with the idea of leaving the sketch in gray scale. My art major daughter advised me that adding color would be a mistake.
But Emily has never seen an Erie Lackawanna locomotive. She has never felt the earth move as one roared past.
The color scheme on these engines was so distinctive, so sexy (yes!) that I just had to do it.

I added the maroon and yellow, and a little blue sky reflecting in the windows, and some rust on the coupler.
I'm glad that I did.

This drawing is a gift for my brother, Gerry -- if he ever sees fit to visit and pick it up. 
I'm going to wince a little when it leaves the house, when I let it go, after all of that work.
But it was drawn by a railfan, with a railfan in mind.
All aboard.

Can I ink one for you?
Inquire at hankbonesman@embarqmail.com

No. 207: Sitting Pretty

"Barbara Eden pinup" by Tom Wills, July 2013, 26'' x 32''

I recently was urged to "try something different" by a woman at an art show.
She said my drawings of musicians, families, dogs and cats are all very nice, but that I should expand my possibilities.
I said that I've also done lighthouses. Italian towns. A country road. Historic buildings. A butterfly? *
"Not mind-blowing," she said.

For sale at $200. Email hankbonesman@embarqmail.com.

Click on all images to enlarge

So I conjured up the Jeannie from the bottle.
Barbara Eden. The first televised navel. It blew my childhood mind, for sure. Still does.
Thank you, Google, for bringing up her image when I typed in "1950s pinup model."
Shazam!

The classic black and white pinup was and remains art. Everything had to be perfect: The lighting, the shadows, the pose.  This photo, I am sure, was shopped around Hollywood before Barbara got her big break in a bottle.

Trying to transfer those shadows and light to pencil and paper proved challenging.
The most difficult thing was making her look smooth. And maybe a little shiny.
Those who know my style understand that I draw dark and rough, lots of angles and hash marks.
This one had to be all clouds. Smooth transitions from light to dark.

The other problem was her face.
Because it is not a full-sized portrait, the face could not be large and central.
It is a full-length body portrait. So some detail in the face had to surrender to the overall image.
She's a young Barbara Eden, not a "Jeannie."
I don't think she could be bottled up.

I had never before drawn the full female form.
It struck me that this pose probably raised a lot of eyebrows, at the time.
My God, she's got breasts and thighs! Where have those been hiding?
Nowadays this is really tame, but still "something different" enough for me.

The chair is one of those swingin' poolside deals, all laced up in plastic.
I admit to digging the high heels.
"Don't take 'em off, don't take 'em off.  Leave 'em on."
I can dream, can't I?

And you know that this is in your head:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwpH_IYg0N8

* In fact, Babs here was drawn in between work on three other projects:  A portrait of two children, a portrait of a friend's mother-in-law, and ... yep ... another dog.