Terraplane Blues part 3

 Since my last visit to the Studio, I spent much time online looking for source material.  I had finished (more or less) the two main human figures (male and female) as well as the third figure, the car.  The way I see it, car bodies are not unlike human bodies from an art point of view, so all three items are figures.  What I was looking for was background material.  Thought about it quite a bit, and decided I needed some buildings and yard.  I had seen some videos on YouTube in recent months that might work.  These characters, working on an old car, left me with the feeling that they were in a lesser neighborhood.  I did know that I could find videos of the worst towns in Illinois (at least according to the guy who made them), and some were towns from the area where I had lived for three years while going to school.  What these towns have in common now is that most are poor, run down from lack of high paying jobs, a lack of income and development, loss of local businesses, etc.  The result is non-urban slums.  When I was in Carbondale, I don't remember any neighborhoods that looked like these, but then again, it's been almost three decades since I lived there, so who knows? I don't remember if any of the buildings I drew were in Carbondale or the surrounding towns.  I also decided to look for some buildings from Clarksdale, Mississippi, right in delta country and arguably the home of the blues.  Robert Johnson used to live there, as did John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and many others. It was also a stop for the Illinois Central railroad, which I used in the Love in Vain print in this series.  In the end, I think the house in front was from Illinois, and the building in the deep background was from Mississippi, but it doesn't really matter.   Below are some pages from my sketchbook, with many renderings of buildings seen online:

When I arrived at the building I saw something familiar at the entrance, a large cardboard box filled with cloth printed with images.  This was Molly work, so she had to be around.  Sure enough, I found her down in our space.  She seemed impressed by the framed prints I had there (Robert Johnson prints from the recent show) and wanted to buy a copy of the Walkin' Blues print.  No hurry, as it may be a while before I see her again, but it's nice to know there is some interest in these things.  As for the box of prints, she was unloading things from her car to make room for more things she needed in her car.  She wished she could spend time working in the Studio, but had to go.

Luckily, I didn't.  I put on some music, my home burned disc of the Reverend Horton Heat (you can read about it back in November of 2021 if you care) which seemed appropriate to the story of the piece. I roughed in two buildings, some yard and driveway, and a fence and gate past the closest house.  Seemed like the kind of neighborhood where people would have a fenced-in yard near their house. The car being worked on is an AMC Javelin, from aspects of the 1968 and 1970 models.  It was that automaker's (a descendent of Hudson and Terraplane) take on the "pony car", which was defined as a low cost, smallish, high powered car, which seemed about right for what I wanted.  I don't know if these are final versions of the background items, but I wanted to get something down to see where I was at.  My goal is to have the drawing done before April 21st, so I can start cutting it at the Open Studio planned for that day.

Speaking of the Open Studio, as I was leaving the building I looked at the cards and pamphlets out on the table near the door, and found there were items for the upcoming Open Studio, same as the previous one, but with the new date, and a purple tone.  I'll have to get photos of them and post them here as we get closer.