Hot time, summer in the city

If you are an old timer, you will remember "hot time, summer in the city" as an old rock and roll song. This summer it has been so hot here (90s and even a few 100s F) that painting in the studio is just not practical for me. So, making lemonade when given lemons, I brought my work downstairs where it's cool. I still have one sitting on the easel upstairs waiting for me to finish. Painting outside en plein air just doesn't appeal to me when it's this hot; when I was younger it didn't matter. The title of this blog is "Slimjohnsonpaints" not "Heatstrokeslimpaints." As you can see, I'm not a big fan of summer.

This drawing is on the board now. The final size will be 18" X 18" and this is a section of that. The scene is from the main street in Waterford, Wisconsin which I have traveled almost anytime that I drive up there looking for reference material. Turn left here.....follow that van up the street and Uncle Harry's homemade ice cream is on your left at the stoplight. I like these old buildings and the street with its tar filled cracks. Which brings to memory the street I lived on as a kid which had tar patches like this one. The street repair crew comes by with molten tar and they pour the hot tar into the cracks in the street. When the temperatures got into the 90s, the tar would bubble and you could pop the bubble with a finger. It was fun, but then you'd have hot tar on your finger which is hard to get off. Incidentally, doing a drawing of this size requires care: no dirty little fingers!...the pencil will come off on your sweaty little hand, so you have to keep a clean sheet of paper under your hand to protect the surface -- by the way....this is a sheet of Stonehenge drawing paper. While I'd rather be painting, this is a great way to test your skill in determining values. In fact it might be too much of a test -- it can be too time consuming and lose a lot of its charm when you have to constantly adjust values and time consuming just doing the drawing. But I love this street scene and knew I had to do something with it. Lastly, I did not do this by any means of projection or tracing --- I just drew it by placement and comparison. If I finish it soon I will try to enter it in a shades of gray show.