No. 325: Walking Through A Postcard

No. 325: "Ashtabula" by Tom Wills, watercolor, February-March 2016

Bridge Street in the historic harbor district of Ashtabula is surely one of the prettiest blocks in Ohio. Really it's a block-and-a-half, and though Bridge Street is really much longer, this spot is always the extent of my annual visits.

Within this brick block are a few restaurants and bars, an art shop, a chocolate maker, a shop that sells home furnishings, a soap-maker, a coffee joint that grinds dozens of bean varieties and serves baked goods -- and a Goodwill store full of old vinyl records. In summer there are hanging pots and giant planters full of impatiens and geraniums everywhere, and tables on the sidewalks.

Plus there's a lift bridge over the Ashtabula River (West Fifth Street Bridge), and many boats (big and small) and trains (all very long) to watch.

The  bridge, with its bells and gates, swings up and down on gears and motors and a giant cement counterweight. It's one of two left in Ohio and the only one on a state route, 531. This Strauss bascule bridge was built in 1925 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It's all explained on a plaque.

This art is for sale. Inquire at willstom01@gmail.com or hankbonesman@embarqmail.com. The frame is solid oak and the painting itself is watercolor and some colored pencil. It is sealed in the frame and will last.

Bridge Street is like walking through a post card for slowed-down, small town America, and small as it is, it has a big place in my heart.  It's where busy people can get turned off, phones down, feet up.

Along the river channel there is a Coast Guard station, a big American flag on a pole, nice benches and a pier with a railing where you can gaze down into the deep water. Norfolk and Southern has a huge coal dock, but it's closing this summer once the coal piles are depleted.

It's sad, when you dwell on the past here. Coal and iron made Ashtabula Harbor an important place as freighters chugged across the Great Lakes and Cleveland, Youngstown, Warren and other cities made steel. It was so important to commerce that the environment was neglected and eventually the river and harbor became an EPA Superfund site., with years of toxic cleanup and dredging until 2014.

But these days, I like the smell of Lake Erie.  I can see my toes when I dip them into the river water. There are birds everywhere and the fishing charter boats are busy. You can usually get lake perch to go with a nice assortment of brews. I recommend visiting the chocolate maker (Marianne's Chocolates) after checking out Harbor Perk.

I took a photo last summer of the block looking toward the bridge, and knew at that moment that I would create a painting from it. I saved the image in my phone for seven months.

In late February I laid out a rough sketch and clamped it onto a chunk of heavy cardboard, and then washed on a light coating of basic watercolor paints.

I mix my paints as I go, using Dixie Cups, water and a spare chunk of poster board to try and match the colors of the photograph. It's all a combination of black, white, brown, red, purple, orange, yellow, blue and green. These are children's Crayola watercolors from Walgreens -- $3.  I went through four trays. My grandson destroyed one but he had a great time with it.

The first piece of detail that I added to the painting was the canopy, center to the image and a dominant black. I also roughed in the windows and trim. After a while I laid in where the green benches would be, and dabbed some red to approximate those impatiens.

I painted the sky four times and finally settled on what you see here. Although the original photo had just bright blue sky, I settled after trial and error on cottony, billowy clouds with just a hint of coming storm behind them.

The brick work was labor-intensive, actually being five washes of paint in differing shades, plus white to highlight the mortar. I watered down white acrylic paint to achieve the effect; the watercolors won't adhere to it, thus making it stand out. A white wax pencil also was used.

I used white acrylic straight from the tube and a little brush to get the flower pots going. The red had been placed earlier, then more green and black, and then the white to make the whole thing pop.

The three-dimensional effect of the painting hit home once I had completed the benches and the storefront windows.  You can see the reflection of the street and the benches in the window panes, and the bench shadows on the sidewalk, and flower pot shadows on the brick and concrete. The effect is imitation sunshine.

Last to be done were the sidewalk and the roadway, plus a tree and the tiny details on and near the bridge. There are three coats of paint on the sidewalk to achieve the concrete effect: tan, yellow and white. The asphalt is a few washes of black, gray and even purple. At the end of the street you can see the historic bridge, a few traffic signals and three gates. There's a guardrail at the start of the bridge and a small fence along the roadside.

I chose to eliminate the utility poles and wires, vehicles and any business signage. In this way, this painting is faithful to the past and won't be undone by whatever comes down the road in the future.

Right now No. 325, "Ashtabula," is unframed. My next adventure will be finding a suitably old and fabulous frame for it, with a mat to hide the painting's rough edges.  (Well, as you can see, I have now done that!)  At that point it'll be finished, and will hang in the dining room here at the house until someone speaks for it.

I try to do two or three paintings each year. This is the first for 2016 and there are several "firsts" within the painting as far as technique. This summer I'm going to take a photo from the other side of the street and see where that leads me.

Contact me at willstom01@gmail.com or hankbonesman@embarqmail.com if you are interested in one of my paintings or drawings.

The painting, photographs and images herein, and the text, are property of the artist and may not be reproduced without written permission from Tom Wills Productions.