The Union Pacific Big Boy

Jeff and Mike

A real horde of train lovers showed up to see the Union Pacific Big Boy on Sunday at Amtrak station downtown. The crowd was so big, that some of us never hooked up for a throwdown. The group in the header were sketching along the track in front of the engine. Jeff, Mike, Susan and Peter were sketching alongside the train in the crowd. Heat and the crowd claimed a few of us early, but Big Boy did not disappoint as a sketching subject.

Peter

Peter arrived very early and did a couple of sketches from across the track on Dart and Elder streets. There was a fence which he artfully deleted, but no crowd. His second sketch was from the vantage point of "the most haunted building in Houston", the original Jeff Davis hospital.

Peter-Big Boy and downtown

He also did several very long views of the train. An unusual composition choice.

Peter

This view was from the station side of the track. 

Peter

Peter

A nice three-quarter view in watercolor.

Michelle and Richard were among those who chose the foreshortened head-on view. Bruce and I were there as well. Standing against the fence and a bit in front at least gave us elbow room to draw.

Bruce and Michelle

Michelle

Bruce

In both cases, they chose to go back later and add some cool text to the page.

Richard also chose this view. You don't often see Richard draw a lot of people, but the crowd was part of the story.

Richard

I anticipated a big crowd, so I worked in graphite and water-soluable graphite and kept it quick and somewhat simple.

Chris

Two new sketchers joined us. The first was Amber.

Amber

The second was Kayoko, who worked from the teeniest little Altoid palette in OILS. I think that's a first. She captured not only the engine, but the passenger cars parked in back.

Kayoko at work and with one of the "steam crew"

Kayoko- passenger car

Kayoko

I especially like the way she abstracted the crowd in front. Speaking of abstract...Carlos decided to stick to black and white too. Charcoal? Conte? I love the shapes for the crowd.

Carlos

Susan went around and got a three quarter view.

Susan

Susan is another person who likes to "compose" a page with image and text.

Mike

Jeff

Mike and Jeff were working on the other side of the station, so when they didn't find the rest of us, they had their own little throwdown.

Mike and Jeff-throw

This event was a good reminder that even under challenging conditions you can make it work.

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