TOM WILLS PRODUCTIONS: No. 342: My Brother's Bridge

No. 342, Rinard Bridge, Washington County, Ohio. Watercolor and ink, by Tom Wills, September 2016

This painting is SOLD!

My younger brother Gerry has always had a thing for photography, speed and escape. His motorcycles allow him to do all three. And though I would never dare to get up on one, I have asked him to "take pictures of things that I can paint" while on his adventures.

Large frame, distressed wood, very heavy!

This bridge in Washington County, Ohio, over Little Muskingum River, is the second of such collaborations. The first -- much earlier work -- is here: http://tomwillsproductions.blogspot.com/2012/06/no-157-untitled.html

This summer, Gerry brought back a stunning and perfect photo of this historic covered bridge. The Rinard Bridge could be called a 'floating bridge' because of its history, according to http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM79KM_Rinard_Covered_Bridge_35_84_28_Washington_County_Ohio waymarking.com:

"This bridge was built in 1876 by the Smith Bridge Company to replace an earlier bridge, built in 1871, that was destroyed by flooding. Both in 1913 and 1938 this bridge was washed off of its piers by flooding, but remained intact and was put back. In 2004 a flood again washed it from its piers. Again, it remained intact, but a second flood a few weeks later tore the bridge apart. The bridge was resurrected using the original trusses, thus allowing it to maintain its historic designation."

Stunning photo by Gerry Wills

I knew that I would paint this bridge the moment that I saw the photo, which captured the sunlight so perfectly. But to reproduce such beauty would take require an arsenal of old and new tricks.

First, of course, was a sketch. Upon those pencil lines I inked the darkest shadows of the bridge, and then sketched in ink the inner timbers and the bottom stones. I then painted over these with black watercolor, which is transparent enough to allow the ink to show through.

The tree branches got a similar treatment, later, with all shades of grays, browns, greens, yellow and even white.

The trees gave me the greatest difficulty as I began to flesh them out from the dark branches, working from dark to light. Brushes, fingertips and even toothpicks were involved. The toothpick trick, tipped in white paint, was something that I recalled from my late mother, watching her paint in oils nearly four decades ago.

The wood panels on the bridge side and the stone textures are pencil, and colored pencil, painted over with browns, pinks and grays.

I added some light blue-gray-purple shy to bring out the trees and make the painting look more natural. Without that wash of color the sky was just too white.

The grass was, at first, finger painting. Honest! I dabbed on shades of green, yellow, brown and blue and used my fingertip to blend them together. I finished the grass off by dipping a fat and coarse horse hair brush into those same colors and running just the tip across the paper to create an illusion of grass blades.

I finished the whole thing by going back to the toothpicks and dabbing white at the edges of stones, leaves, railings and the rooftop. Some of that got coated over with yellow (sunlight), or gray (stone) or red (flowers).

This painting came together very quickly, in about a week. I had the backing of my brother's vision and my mother's lesson and maybe those forces guided me.
The completion came on Sept. 11, 2016, the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attack on America's twin towers in New York City. That was coincidental.
The rebuilding of this bridge in the middle of nowhere in rural Ohio pales in the shadow of the rebuilt World Trade Centers site in the heart of one of America's greatest cities, I know, and the comparison is a weak one.
But, damn it, if it gets knocked down, we will put it back up.