Boardwalk Nights part 5

While I was still in Belmar this morning, I took my camera for a short walk on Main Street. One of the things that I shot was this sign out in front of Freedman's Bakery, a long established business in town. The sign is a good example of what is commonly called Googie, an architectural and design movement that was widespread in the 1950's. Also sometimes known as Doo-Wop and Populuxe, the style was designed to draw attention from motorists, doing so with futuristic looking buildings, unusual geometry, and bright colors, especially evoking the atomic and space ages. The style was also used in a lot of signs, even when outside otherwise ordinary buildings. Common elements in Googie signs include combinations of different geometric shapes (often mixing hard sharp angles and curved forms), as well as combining different colors and lettering styles, and including elements that have no structural function, but exist just to catch the eye.

What this has to do with the current project is that Wildwood, NJ not only has one of the state's largest boardwalks, but was also considered a nationally recognized center of Doo-Wop architecture. (a lot of it has been torn down in recent years, but some good examples remain) I'm not planning to do any prints in my boardwalk series specifically about Wildwood, but it makes sense to me to have some of that style pop up in the series. So back when I was converting my reference photos to a full compositional sketch, I added an oddly shaped structure on top of the nearest building. Not a copy of any existing boardwalk sign that I've ever seen, but just something that I made up using the vocabulary of the style. Today it was one of the parts of the block that I worked on, refining some shapes and adding text. (I didn't want to use any existing boardwalk pizza place names, and chose the name Don's mostly because it's short, not because of the Belmar pizza restaurant a block away from Freedman's) I also put the same lettering, but larger, on the overhang above the front entrance to the store, but I'm pretty sure that I will be changing that soon to something else. I moved the angled counter in the store to the other side of the opening, as I realized that there was no room for balloon game booth that shares the building's corner. No further detail in there today, since I expect figures will fill a lot of that space. Also on that side of the block I added more detail to the balloon booth, and made the store to the left of the pizzeria a clothing store.

On the left side of the block I put in the fireworks and hints of the smoke left behind. On the ground level I added another amusement park ride in the deep background, and decided officially to make the nearest building a public restroom. I also added spotlights to buildings in both panels, since logically something must light all these signs at night.

Below is a view of the whole block in its current state. I still need to work on a lot of the signs, and then start adding people- individuals and crowds.