Boardwalk Days part 15

 It's been a long time since this work was mentioned here, about 10 years since the last post, and about 12 years since the last time I worked on it.  A lot has happened since then, and here's a little explanation.  I think this was the seventh print in the boardwalk series, also known as The Floating World.  One of the boardwalk prints I finished was called Boardwalk Nights, and it was a scene of a boardwalk at night- completely fictitious, though thoroughly accurate. (Many times people saw it in shows and claimed they had been to this boardwalk, but I knew it was a lie, as I made it up myself.)  However it did occur to me that maybe I should make a boardwalk daytime .print of a real place, and chose Asbury Park, which is within walking distance of my Studio, and mostly because no town loves itself more than Asbury Park, and any art that features any recognizable part of Asbury would likely be shown in galleries in town.  I picked a piece of space that I particularly liked, and set about drawing fairly accurate renderings of those buildings.  

Then some things happened.  We had a major hurricane roll through, which meant a loss of power for more than a week, and hours devoted to cleaning up the basement where much of my older work had been stored.  Part of my  walking path to that location space was torn up, which made it a little more inconvenient to get there.  As the end of the fall semester approached, I had to devote a lot of time to grading of student work.  The type of wood I had been using became unavailable.  My sources for ink, paper, mat board, and frame parts all closed or went out of business, leaving me scrambling to find alternatives.  A pandemic hit our nation, which affected everyday supplies (food, paper products, etc), teaching jobs, and exhibition opportunities,  although somehow Molly and I were categorized as "essential workers" so we could still use our Studio space, if we could get to it.  Thieves took advantage of the mostly empty building to break into that same Studio space, and from there enter the building.  (Molly and I had little worth stealing, so we didn't lose much)  I was hit with two potentially fatal medical conditions, which took a lot of my time, and continue to do so.  And I probably came up with more ideas of prints I wanted to do.  I looked at the in-progress block drawing at times, last seen in the apartment I had back then, but it went into storage and I hadn't seen it in a while.  At my last visit to the storage unit I found the block again and brought it home.  Maybe it's time to work on it again.

I finished the last Robert Johnson block earlier this week, and I'm not quite ready to start the next one, so it seemed a good time to get back to my boardwalk scene.  Today was a little rainy, but nothing I couldn't handle, and I had brought the block up to my Studio on a sunny day earlier in the week.  However, there were problems.  For one, the whole front lot was full, and a dumpster was occupying the handicap spaces, so that was out.  The sidewalk and driveway from Lawrence Ave to our back parking lot were all torn up and closed, so I couldn't use that.   However, from the street it appeared that I could get to that lot from Main, so I went around the long block and found my way to a parking spot.  The back door was unavailable, so I had to walk completely around the building to get in. 

For music I had brought with me a home burned disc of favorites from Bruce Springsteen, what I call Volume 1.  I made the two disc set in chronological order, and so what I listened to today were songs from the first three albums, which is what I think of as Bruce's New Jersey albums, the first of which is called, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, which seemed very appropriate for a scene set on Asbury's boardwalk.  However, before I got any further, I headed upstairs to find out more about the figure group that I had read was meeting on Thursdays on the second floor.  The windows were covered, and I was told the doors were locked (made sense for a class with a nude model) so I waited for it to end.  Andrew let some people locked out of the room in, but I continued to wait.  Fifteen minutes after the group was supposed to end I checked it out for myself and found dozens of people sitting in chairs, not drawing, and a little sign on the door saying that the drawing group was moved to the first floor.  But at that moment I saw Joe (the organizer) by his studio door, so I asked him the questions I had, which is why I was up there in the first place.  Problem solved, back to the basement.  

Early on I tested my ability to cut the wood with the tools I had, as this wood was at least 12 years old, but luckily it worked.  Didn't do much drawing today, just fixed up the benches in the foreground a little and added an element planned from the beginning, an airplane towing a banner with words.  I remember such things being common enough on beaches when I was young, plus it filled up a section of the otherwise empty sky.  Exactly what it should say I wasn't sure.  I do remember seeing messages about "Schickhaus Franks" up in the sky when I was a kid, but I think those were skywriting, not banners.  So for now I put a message about a common beach activity, but it may change.  What I added can be seen in the diptych below:

I do plan to add some figures, doing such activities as riding bicycles, on skateboards, walking, sitting on those benches, putting on suntan lotion, and whatever else I come up with.  (part of the reason I want to get some practice with figure)  Plus there are pieces of the buildings that I have no idea what I started- but I think I have enough photos of the space to figure it out.  And I doubt that I have the proper watercolors to finish the piece, but I won't know that until I start to color it, and that is way off.  (again, photos of the buildings will help figure out some of it)  I have ideas for two more prints in this series (ideas that go back over a decade), but I'm not going to worry about those until I finish this one. I was let out the back ramp to the parking lot, so at least my trip back to my car wasn't too long.