Rochester Postercard Project Day 2

So here I am with the next scene.  And continuing with the theme I was still at this point at the Marina.  It was so peaceful and quiet.  It was so early in the spring and still a bit cold but the trees where starting to bud but, too cold for sailing.  The piers were all empty, with a little bit of stuff strewn around.  At this pier I found this canoe full to the top with water with a thin sheet of ice just under its surface. The people renting this spot would have a bit of cleanup to do but for now it was still a tiny bit frozen in time.

Rochester Postcard Project

     During the first few months after moving to Rochester NY I was unemployed.  During that time the state had me going out and looking for work and sitting at a non-profit for 30 hours a week all to get $350 in food stamps a month and another $200 for everything else.  I was on the bus many hours a day going to a fro trying to find work.  As I did that I carried with me a tiny 3 x 5 sketchbook to capture scenes from around the city.
   
     Over time I filled it up.  Going back through them I picked out 39 of the best of them and created the above poster.  It is for sale at $20 each and it is 18 x 24 - so a pretty good size.  If you are interested in getting one of the posters let me know.  But, over the next 39 days I will place a post here about each of the postcards.

    
                                THE SPIRIT OF ROCHESTER

   
     One day in early spring I decided to check out one of the marinas near Charlotte.  It took me about 40 minutes to walk down to the area from my home and I had seen the boat tied up there.  The owner gave me permission to go anywhere I wanted as long as I did not go out on any of the piers or boats.  I had heard of the Spirit of Rochester long before coming down here.  And had known that it no longer ran.  But, while I was walking the grounds there I came across her.  I got up close enough to see through the windows and everything was still on the boat but in total disarray.  It was being held by the Marina owner as collateral by the boat's owner since it had been abandoned there.

     I felt depressed to see it laying there, rusting away and forgotten.  After walking around it for a while I found a spot and drew this scene.  To me, it was a clear reminder of how run down the city seemed to be.  Here I was in a city overflowing with history and everyone seemed to be ignoring it.  I did not know it at the time but seeing this ship would be my kick off to finding a way to celebrate and honor this new city I had moved to.

More buildings of Rochester "Powers" Bldg

     So - going with a theme I now explain one of the most popular buildings in Rochester, the Powers bldg.  It is at the corner of State and Main.  And it was built in fits and starts.  What does that mean?  Well, the owner first had it built up to 4 floors.  Then, one of his rivals built a building across the street from him that was taller.  So, what does he do?  He hires a new architect and adds 3 more floors.  S, his rival made his taller. So, he added the tower - then more to it then the flag pole and with that he won.  Because it was built this way the styles from floor to floor changed and made for a strange mash but one beautiful bldg.
     I decided to go with the look of an old photo with this pen and ink above.  and gain I followed the same formula that has worked for me so well.  First, I took my own photo.

     This gave me the dramatic angle I needed.  Looking at this photo I may redo the pen and ink to also be in color.  When I do I will post it here.  Next I went online to find images to get the details I needed.  I didn't have to look far for this one.  It is a popular bldg and there were many images of it.  In the end I used this one below to get the details.

Anatomy of a building portrait

      As a follow up I wanted to talk about the process I use to create a portrait of a building.  This is the "Academy."  It was the first "Brick and Mortar" school in Rochester.  It did have other smaller buildings before this one.  The building you see above was built in 1873.  When I moved into town I was despondent to see its roof in disrepair and looking vacant.  I loved the gothic look to it.
     Last year I noticed that it was being fixed up.  I made a point of spending a day walking around and sketching bits and pieces.  I made friends with the Chef of the Cafe inside and as a result I met the building owner.  As a member of the Landmark Society I was pleased to see it featured as a model for remodeling and restoration.  This year when asked to offer a piece of work for the annual Gala I decided to do a watercolor painting of this building.  The Gala this year is called "The Art of Preservation" and will be held tomorrow at the Memorial Art Gallery.  So - for the first time in my life I will have a piece of my work on display in an Art Museum(at least for one day - lol). 
     For most building portraits I start with a photo that I have taken to get the dramatic angle that I want.  This gives me the basic layout for my painting or print.  Then, as with all these buildings built so long ago I go online and do some research to find images taken of the same building when it was new(if they exist).  This gives me the details that have changed or taken off.

     From these I gather as much of the details that I can.  Most buildings in New York that were built during the turn of the century have smoke stacks and as soon as they start renovating that is the first thing to go(state regulations).  The cast iron fencing on the roof line had to be added back in.  Here I had to make an educated guess.  And finally I chose to move the flag pole back to the top. 
     In the photo that I took there are trees and as you can see from the older ones there were none.  I did leave one in the painting to set an edge or frame the shot but the others I had to come up with something to block the view as it is in my photo.  So I went back to the archive photos from Rochester and chose the delivery wagon you see in the painting.  It was of a local store and as you can see in the older photo above they were using horse drawn wagons. 

     I started with a pencil sketch of the entire portrait, making sure all the details were drawn in. Then I painted in the base color without erasing the pencil drawing then I went over the entire piece with a pen to go over the pencil drawing.  After that I erased the pencil lines, touched up the color and went over the entire piece with a pencil to finish up the shadows and blend out any blemishes.

     In the end I finished up with a dramatic Image of one of Rochester's unique gems as seen during the pinnacle of our city's history

    

     So - I have been out of touch here for a few months.  My family has taken a big hit these past few months.  A cousin in law Brett(my age) had a stroke, brother in law Walt(my age) died, cousin George(my age) died then an Aunt and Uncle also died.  After my Uncles' passing my mom said out loud "Basta" or "Enough".  We've mourned plenty I know them all well and know that they would say move on, live your life.  So with that said I dive into my work.
     I will be doing a review of a lot of the landmarks in Rochester, since I love the old buildings around here.  I begin with this guy above.  It was originally built to be a clothing store for the National Clothing Company whose manufacturing was done here too.  I don't have the details as to when it was built but figure it was late 1800s' to early 1900s' just because of the detail included on it.  I did my best to represent most of the small details and I know I have missed a lot since some is inside. Thank God they are preserving that too.  It was for a while a bank then for years it sat vacant.  This past year I have watched as they have been gutting it and remodeling it into the Hilton Garden Inn.
     It has been attached to the Hilton Hotel ever since the hotel was built but they bought the property and are making some fancy suites out of it.  Another example of the SLOWLY reviving downtown here in Rochester.  I fretted for a little bit as I watched them demolish an adjacent building then the old smoke stack.  But, they seem to be sticking close to the original, beautiful detail that give this site its character.  I can't wait to see the inside once they finished.

Reflections on my childhood

As this month ends I have been reflecting on my early years.  At work we are always running a contest of one sort or another.  This past month has been around NASA space history as a hook.  Well on my desk I have one of my paper models.  It is the Gemini Titan rocket you see above.  Now having a model to work from I started drawing this piece above.  The problem was - in order to draw it all with some degree of detail I used a seperate sheet of paper for each stage ( the bottom stage being too big to draw on one sheet).  Thank God I have taught myself photoshop so I could scan them all into my computer and peace them all back together as you see it there.  Drawing this made me remember the bits of history that I experienced.  The first memory was being in elementary class and my teacher had pulled in a tv so that we could watch the first man land on the moon.  That is the first "clear" memory.  There is a fuzzy memory of what NASA was doing while I lived in Puerto Rico.  I can remember going to Cape Canaveral with the family as a young teenager.  Then when I was in Mexico on my senior trip to Yucatan with my friend Erik we stopped our site seeing for one day to sit in a Salvation Army childrens home to watch the first Shuttle Launch.  And while staying with my older sister in Florida during a Christmas break I stood on her balcony in Orlando and watched an Air Force Titan (much like the one above) ark up into the sky. I could not believe that I could hear it go up from that far away. 
     Like most young boys of the 50's and 60's I was enamoured with space travel.  I wanted to be an astronaught.  In Asbury, in my speech class I used the Shuttle Manual I had to deliver a speech on how use the shuttle galley(complete with a working carboard model of it that I made and wearing a lab coat I bought and Shuttle patches sown onto it.  Above me right now on my wall is a patch I got from one of the shuttle ground crew.  When I worked for Airport Security in the TSA in Colorado She came through and I had the luck to be the one screening her.  She worked on "STS 107" The ill fated final mission of the shuttle Columbia.  I remember both lost Shuttles vivdly.  A tragedy, all the losses that NASA suffered, to be sure.  But, what sticks in my head is that we as a nation mourned for them, picked up the pieces, figured out what went wrong and kept going up there. 

This Patch reminds me of that point.  I feel that my facination for space travel led me to an avenue out of my own hardships of math and reading since it lead to my interest in science and science fiction.  My father will remember defending me to the principle of the school in Mexico when I turned in a term paper about black holes.  I had a history teacher that told me to my face that I would amount to nothing in life.  When she announced that we had to turn a term paper about anything we wanted to I did mine about the black holes.  I did it to spite her but I did my research(well before the internet existed) for that paper.  When she refused to take it I balked and my dad went to the principle.  Upon confirming what the teacher had said about doing it about anything the principle took to the head of the schools science department who gave me an A. 
     While I did not go to work for NASA - in one form or another my interest for it helped me reach some of the successes  I have gotten.  We all have something that catches our interests early in life.  For those who have little kids - encourage those interest (just as MY parents did).  It may go nowhere but it will still help shape them as they grow.  So Live Long and Prosper ....

Breathing new life into old projects

So, this past week another store opened in the old Wegmans that closed near us.  This time it is the Goodwill store.  They remodeled part of the building to be their store.  My wife, Juli and I went there after church on Sunday to check it out.  We left with some small stuff but she also picked up a steamer and I with a 17 inch flat screen monitor($9) woo hoo.  My laptop screen cracked some time ago - so I have had to deal with a big blotch on the screen where the crack is.  I was able to plug in the new screen and walla - big (clean) new screen.  I am on it right now. 
It also means that I was able work on my graphics program at a size that doesn't strain my eyes.  These past few days I went back to some old projects that were in their line stages and scanned and finished them up.  Above is a piece I wanted to do a whole set of cards(eventually).  But the first one was this one of me for a small post card for my business.  I pulled out my old uniform to get the details right.  Thought it turned out pretty cool.

I also redid a piece that I once did years ago when I worked at a sign shop.  I created this as a decal that could be put on a vehicle on both sides(so reversible).  I had the original pencil line drawing so I scanned it in and recolored it.  I have the original digital image some where but at over 1000 dpi so very slow to open and most print shops are not setup for that.  So this one is at the standard 300 dpi. I wanted a fierce look for the eagle.  I do know that there are several vehicles in Afghanistan with this guy on their sides.  I want to revisit this as part of a patch of embroidered on the back of a jacket, heck, even as a tattoo maybe.