No. 483: The Word Factory (at Night)

 

No. 483, "The Word Factory (at Night)," watercolor by Tom Wills, September 2021

The rear end of any production building is not usually a pretty place. The back end of a newspaper during the day is populated by returned papers, vehicles with uncertain life spans, birds and moths. All of the landscaping is up front.

But at night, after the production is done — and under the lights — it can be beautiful, especially after a rain that creates reflections and long shadows.

I took a lot of night photos of 240 Franklin St. SE on my way out of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator in Warren, Ohio. Our photographer told me the lights look green because the phone camera captures the part of the color spectrum in motion at that moment. The camera on its own is not smart enough to make the correction; it takes bright people to get it right.

A lot of that fixing goes on all day, and through the night, in the wide room upstairs where the lights stay on.
In that room a small gang of friends builds two newspapers from scratch every day, in a span of 18 hours — from the first pot of coffee in the morning to the last truck out on the next morning.

It’s not an easy job. The older people are getting older while the younger ones are harder to hire, not particularly trained nowadays for print journalism — and they don’t stay too long. It’s a job that requires patience in a time when people have none.
This painting is for those of us who stay, and we want to hang it in that wide bright room.

The rear end of a career can get messy too.
I’ve done this for 38 years, and I’m in my third year here. The original Vindicator in Youngstown closed, unable to figure out these fast times. A few of us transplants are keeping The Vindicator alive upstairs in our foster home.

We show up every day, or night, and pound through our shifts, with words, pictures and designs to catch your eyes, and we hope your dollars. We manage to populate two web sites and social media too, along with numerous community outreach efforts. 
We don’t have much time to read blogs or listen to podcasts by academics, out-of-towners and retirees who decry “news deserts” and bloviate about the future of “legitimate journalism,” because we’re busy working it.
Upstairs there's that light that never goes out.

About this painting, No. 483, “Word Factory (at Night).”

This is my first painting since July 2021, but the photo it is mainly based on was taken on March 12, 2020. So I’ve thought about it for a long time — see time rant above. I took a bunch more night and day photos right before getting started.

Next I drew a rough sketch and mapped out the field of colors I wanted to use, including that spectral green (and lime, yellow, pink, red, orange, brown, blue and black.)

I then drew a proper sketch of the building and watercolor-washed over it with the brown, black, red, pink and green.
Eliminated from the image were a fence and a power generator, parked cars, and I took liberty in turning overgrowth into shrubbery.

Next came the night sky —which is everything but black. Blue and purple make an appearance here.
The parking lot in the foreground was a problem. It’s a mixture of greens, yellows, pinks, browns and blacks. The photo made it green; on paper it looked like grass. It took several washes of black, gray, brown and white to approximate illuminated asphalt at night. I stubbornly kept some green.

I toned down the spotlights too but drew in some rays of light with a china marking pencil.
Final details were tightened up using watercolor pencils and a Sharpie marker, and a bit of water.

The painting fits perfectly into a very nice frame provided at an immense discount by my friends at Furniture Decor and More in Cortland. Thank you, that was a big help.
I asked the boss to figure out where she wants to hang it. We’re gonna put a hanger hole in a wall soon.