When Pigs Can Fly

These metal sculptures were at a bar-b-que place in Sonoma I went to last week.  The saying When pigs can fly must have meaning behind why the owner chose this image to represent his bar-b-que joint.  The pigs stood on top of trailers used to cater food around the area.

The meaning behind that saying is "it will never happen".  

Maybe he knows his bar-b-que isn't all that great.  I've had better.

The Evolution of a Drawing

When I started out on this drawing I was just going to draw a tree.  Nothing else, just a tree.  As you can see things kind of took off from there.  There was no plan.

Typically when doing darkness in pen and ink such as the night time sky here, it is done in a crosshatch method.  One makes a series of short vertical lines then goes back and crosses over those lines with short diagonal lines in one direction, then repeat in the other diagonal direction and you may even add short horizontal lines to make the effect even darker.  This is a quick method of creating black, although it may not seem so, but you can rapidly make those short lines repeatedly.

I started out on the night sky with the intent on trying crosshatching for the first time even though I am not a fan of it.  I got in the second row of vertical lines, and knew I would not be able to bring myself into crosshatching them since I don't care for that technique.  I tried something different - vertical lines only throughout.  It was a tedious and laborious process placing lines within lines without crossing any and if I like the end result or not, I am not so sure but the journey to get there was fun...for me at least.  (that last bit I'll enhance upon on the next drawing I post)

The foreground was an entirely different process which was even more enjoyable to do and I think would have worked better for the sky than what I had already done.  It was all one big experiment just to see how things would turn out.  Now I know, good or not so good though, that I do not know.

Cactus and the Heat

Its been warm here lately, some may say HOT!  Not I.  I love this weather.  Next Wednesday we may hit 100 (37.8c)  here  (the next day they backed that prediction down a few degrees, "sigh").  Ah but nothing like Borrego Springs (where I'd like to live, in the desert of California close to the Mexican border) which will be anywheres from 111 (43.8c) to 115 (46c) for the next 10 days.  Yeah, that is a bit much.  And then there's Death Valley ranging from 115 to 122 (50c) for the next 10 days.  Yikes!

One of my more colorful cactus is loving this weather though.

United States Highway Map

I've had this map for a long time, nicely folded up and put away.  I had forgotten about it and came upon it while looking for something.  I spend a lot of my time looking for things but that's not what this is about.  I thought I ought to display the map so I could enjoy it more.  What is unique about this map is that it was printed in 1957.  It was only just the year before that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had authorized the Federal Aid Highway Act which set into motion the construction of our interstate highway system.

What this boils down to is that all of those red lines criss-crossing our country back then were for the most part just simple two-lane highways.  Maybe they widen out to four lane boulevards in major cities for a brief distance, but two lanes everywhere else.  Click on the maps to see them better.

Here is the same section of our country today displaying all the major multi-lane highways of our interstate highway system.  Many of them were built upon existing two-lane highways from above.  Some bypassed towns on established two-lane roads and the town eventually ceased to exist.  A lot of service stations (where you got maps like mine for 25 cents), cafes and motels were put out of business with the interstate construction process.  Imagine the politics at play back then.

When Sinbad and I travel we stay off the interstates as much as possible.  You see so much more when not whizzing along at 70 miles per hour.  I'll drive the old highways that still exist and think back to how times were so much better back in 1957 when gas was under 50 cents a gallon and about the only thing we ever worried about was if the Russians would drop a nuclear ICBM missile on us.

Those were the good old days.

I See Colors

A long time ago, longer than I care to fess up to, my wife gave me a set of colored pencils thinking I might want to incorporate some color into my pen and ink drawings.  Gee, the last time I used color was with crayons in my coloring book when I was a little guy.

The pencils sat for years, untouched and hardly ever looked at and they were pretty to look at too.

Recently I mustered up the courage to venture into uncharted territory for me and try out the colored pencil set my wife gave to me as a gift.

I'll have to admit, it came out better than I thought it would, not knowing what I was doing.  I'll confess that I was going off an image from a cocktail napkin.  The black portions are ink, not pencil.

Will I do color again?   Maybe...probably, but I won't wait 30 years to do so the next time.

Getting the Ink Flowing...yet again.

I dug out my ink pens and thought I would try to get back into drawing again.  I decided to practice some treating it as an exercise just to see if I still "had it".  As I progressed I realized it is much like riding a bicycle; you never forget.  I started this on regular old sketch pad paper, not the ideal paper for inkwork, and eventually reached the point where I didn't want to waste any more time on it because of the quality of paper.  So this technically is unfinished and will remain so.

This was also an experiment in filming the process of the pen and ink drawing.  After numerous attempts with different cameras and different settings in various positions I kind of got it right towards the end.  So that is why the drawing is well along to completion in the video.  The video is only 2 minutes long but is kind of neat seeing the progress in time lapse.

Last of the Car Show

I've always like the black and yellow plates of California.  I see now one can special order them from the DMV much like vanity plates.  I think it would look rather silly on my VW Golf or the motorhome.  

This early 50's Buick proudly displays that it has an eight cyclinder engine.  Only thing is that it is not a V-8 but rather an inline 8.  My love for automobile engines has always been with inline motors. 

Too bad the owner didn't have the hood up.  I read once that General Motors styled these ports on the side of the Buicks after a WW2 fighter plane, I believe the Mustang.

Pure class.  All we see on automobile glass these days are decals placed there by their owner like stick figures of the dad, mom, a bunch of kids, plus the dog and cat.

This was rather difficult to get a picture of what with all the reflections. 

Wood and Iron

There is nothing like the wood they use to use on cars in the 40's and 50's.

This was a Pontiac or Oldsmobile (I forget) and I had never seen one with wood before.

I have only one engine shot so I'll include it here.  Not many had the hoods up except for the late model muscle cars which held no interest for me.  The only thing worse is taking a 30's, 40's or early 50's car and dropping in a big V-8 motor into it.  To me that's an abomination and I just walk on by.

I love the simplicity here.

Tail Lights

Notice the step on the bumper and top of fender for climbing into and out of the rumble seat.

Yeah, these are so cool.  Its my favorite too.

Yesterday, June 9, was the date in 1909 that 22-year-old Alice Huyler Ramsey finished her cross country drive in a 1909 Maxwell (30 horsepower) thus becoming the first woman to do so.  Three female companions accompanied her but she did all the driving.  She left her home in Hackensack New Jersey and arrived in San Francisco 59 days later.  There are some wonderful accounts of this remarkable young lady's adventure online.  Well, all four of the women's adventure.

More Hood Ornaments

Another influenced by the jet age

The winged God of automobiles.  

I don't recall this God in my Greek or Roman mythology, but here it is. 

I tried all types of angles to capture the Mayflower ship without a lot of background interference.

This was the best that could be had and its not that good.

Notice the Mayflower once again.

I think the designer got carried away with this one.

Hood Ornaments

Interesting that when we entered the age of jet planes the auto industry went along with that theme.

A few more to come.

Two More Front Ends

This is just pure class.

A lady standing next to me asked what the horns sounded like.  

I said "Probably pretty loud".

Next I focused on the hood ornaments on the cars. 

First a couple that served as radiator caps.  Notice the thermometers.

  There was no temperature gauge inside on the dashboard in those days.

Notice the bezel design was the same for Ford and Chevrolet 

as they were made by an outside supplier.

Same with wings.

Hood ornaments next.

More Beautiful Grills...not Girls.

There's more metal to the grill of this car than there is for the entire car they make these days!

I was surprised to see this 1946 Chevrolet as they are not often seen.  This is the Stylemaster model.  I once had a 1946 Chevrolet Fleetmaster, the next model up.  I fully restored it even to the correct two color paint scheme from the factory.  It was so nice that I eventually became afraid to drive it for fear of it getting damaged.  I sold it and got a 1937 Chevrolet truck and left it "as is".  Lesson learned.

It was nice to see this though as every little piece to it brought back fond familiar memories.  

I wish the owner had the hood up for me to see the engine.