On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Our featured artist today is Grumpy Old Railroader! He doesn’t seem that grumpy to me, so let’s give him a warm welcome.
If you would like your talent featured in the Artists in Our Midst series, send me an email message. Don’t be shy! This is one of the final Artists posts in the queue, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured. Authors, too!
This is along the lines of “How it Started” vs the other paintings which are “How it is Going.”
So yeah I keep this first real painting – when I get frustrated I pull it out and realize I’ve come a long way.
I retired from the railroad after 44 years in 2008. I had always “doodled” and even took a couple of art classes in school. Dabbled in string sculptures, macrame wall hangings and a few crappy paintings in my hippie daze (not misspelled). I got serious in 2016 and outfitted myself with cheap tools, cheap paints, cheap everything.
Once I got to a real art class my instructor sat me down and explained that art is a craft like carpentry or anything else. Get the best tools and best everything, master all the painting techniques and learn to fly. His only caveat was that some folks pick it up a lot quicker than others but that every person, given time and practice, can learn to paint.
So I feel I have arrived somewhat. When I started I perhaps painted a “keeper” 1 out of 20 paintings. I got it down to 1 out of less than 10. Progress! (And nobody sees the flops I painted). My usual process is my beautiful young bride (married in 1973) and I wander up and down the California North Coast in our RV for 3-4 months every year (month at a time) and I hike and take pics. The good pics get printed out and used for a painting. Alternatively, like the Chickadee painting, I just google a good pic on the inner tubes.
Prints, towels, coffee cups, and even pillow covers are available at my website.
From Daughter-in-Law photo
Ha! Watched a master do this one on Youtube and tried it several times.This was my 3rd attempt
From a photo circa 1960’s
Oak Tree and Afternoon Sunlight
Between Westport and Fort Bragg CA
Chickadee from a photo
From a photo
From a photo
Flowering Plum Blossom
Pudding Creek Railroad Trestle from a photo postcard I purchased
WaterGirl
i’m sure there will be questions, so if you’re a grumpy old railroader, please let us know when you get here!
Grumpy Old Railroader
Grumpy’s train is at the station
sab
No questions. I just love these paintings. They are all so diferent but all so wonderful.
MagdaInBlack
Thank you for these. I’ve said before watercolors are my favorite. This time the Flowering Plum Blossom snagged me ❤️
jeffreyw
Bah! Get offa my tracks!
//
sab
So no pears available at your site?
LivinginExile
Beautiful ! There is something about them that I REALLY like, but I can’t put my finger on what it is.
schrodingers_cat
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Can you talk about your materials? Do you sketch first or just start with the colors.
Thanks.
The train’s my favorite.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@MagdaInBlack: My favorite too. Watercolor is different than other mediums. The “white” is actually the paper and one paints around it preserving the white
WaterGirl
@MagdaInBlack: That flower painting is stunning.
WaterGirl
@Grumpy Old Railroader: I notice that the original isn’t available on that one. :-( Already sold or hanging on to it yourself?
JimV
Goddamn those are good paintings!
Grumpy Old Railroader
Watercolor paper comes in various thickness. This was 300 lb cold press paper which can take a load of water without rippling. I normally sketch the main objects and paint right over it. You can easily erase sketch marks if done lightly.
WaterGirl
@sab: There are pears available on his website!
schrodingers_cat
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Thanks. Which brand do you use do you have a particular preference for the paper or the colors?
Grumpy Old Railroader
My nephew is a 3rd generation locomotive engineer and has called dibbs
Baud
The pair painting reminds me of the Obama hope and change art from 2008.
You are talented.
debbie
These are really very impressive! Have you entered any shows yet
ETA: I also love the plum blossom, but the oak and shafts of sunlight create a really wonderful mood.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Any brand of 300 lb paper will work. Just a matter of preference. As for paints, it depends on what the artist prefers using. Danial Smith makes a good affordable product but I am partial to M. Graham, Schmincke and Windsor & Newton. Example: I like the color Cerulean Blue by Windsor Newton but not the same color by M. Graham. Again, just preference. As for brushes I tend to go with the natural sable although some synthetic are perfectly fine. Like any craftsman, you start cheap, then figure out why all the great craftsmen are using expensive equipment
MomSense
I love these! I wish I could paint.
Grumpy Old Railroader
It is all about learning techniques. The streaming shadows are made by laying two parallel pieces of paper to form the shadow and then using an upside down toothbrush to “spatter” the dust particles. Painting is merely learning every technique. I’m still learning
sab
@WaterGirl: Yes. Nice ones. But not those four.
SpaceUnit
Nice stuff!
sab
I love watercolor when the painter goes for some dark.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Anybody can learn to paint. It just takes getting the proper equipment and learning all the little techniques, like how to lay on the paint, composition, magic tricks and perseverance. Caveat: People with a natural talent pick it up much more quickly than my slogging through a couple of years of trial and error before taking some classes. If I can do it, anyone can
different-church-lady
“Mr. Warhol, I’d like to commission you for a portrait of this pear.”
LiminalOwl
Wow, lovely. Thank you. That oak tree…
Grumpy Old Railroader
That is just another technique, Watercolor is layed on from light to dark and from background to foreground because unlike oil or acrylic, in watercolor you cannot paint a light color over a dark color. In landscape, think of distant hazy blue hills and nearer crisp dark colors
What you are commenting about is what is called “low-key” or mostly dark. “High-key” is mostly light values (shades)
Another Scott
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.
I remember doing some “painting” in afterschool daycare. One has to learn early on that less is much more, and too much is much too much!
I also remember teaching myself that drawing was often about shadows and not about hard edges of shapes (from playing around sketching from a picture of the Pietà).
I had a boss who was convinced that he couldn’t draw until he got a copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. He still needed a lot of practice after that, but everyone needs to practice! ;-)
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@sab: Those 4 pears are intended to give the rest of us hope. A good reminder that the starting point is not the end point.
Mike in Oly
Watercolor is so much fun to play with. I love your paintings. The plum blossoms especially. I started playing with them years ago with the intention of creating paintings from my iris photography, but got discouraged and have only halfheartedly worked at improving since. I really need to get back into doing it every weekend.
Tenar Arha
@Grumpy Old Railroader: I like the locomotive & the trestle for the lines & colors, love the softness of the blossom & the Sacramento Valley. Thanks for sharing.
sab
@Grumpy Old Railroader: But the dark is such a commitment.
sab
@WaterGirl: But the starting point was so good.
Grumpy Old Railroader
A fantastic book and highly recommended for anyone. It really teaches you to “see” what you are looking at. Instead of a tree, one sees shapes and values
WaterGirl
@sab: 100x better than I could do!
I am convinced that artists see the world differently than the rest of us.
Grumpy Old Railroader
This. Been there. I started a painting, got discouraged and moved onto other paintings. One year later I was reorganizing and came across that unfinished piece and it dawned on me right there how to fix it. One of my best projects and my sweet young bride has it hanging in our home
Scout211
Oh my. I love watercolor paintings. They are so delicate and so expressive with each brush stoke. Your paintings are gorgeous. My favorite is the Sac Valley oak tree. That could easily be one of the oak trees on my property. I love it.
Grumpy Old Railroader
Confession: That was one of my early successes done in an art class. The instructor taught “step by step” classes. “Okay watch me do this. Now class, you do it. Next watch me do this.” Etc until step by step the entire class had painted the oak tree
Scout211
Is the oak tree print for sale on your site? I couldn’t find it on my first pass through your prints.
ETA: found it.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@Scout211: You must have skipped over it.
https://bruce-holder.pixels.com/featured/sunbeams-bruce-holder.html
WaterGirl
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Did you happen to see my question about the flower painting?
Dorothy A. Winsor
I particularly like the seascape, the bird, and the plum blossom.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The first and the plum blossom were my favorites! (in reverse order)
The trains are also cool.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@WaterGirl: My sister has the original. I tend to give my stuff away
sab
I have a former brother in law who is a professional painter. He does oil and guache, not watercolor.
He says the thing about oils is that if he likes a painting he can paint it again. So sell the one and repaint it for his own collection.
Not so with guache (or watercolor.) The medium is as much in charge as the painter. So every painting is unique.
WaterGirl
@Grumpy Old Railroader: If your sister’s house is broken into and the only thing that is missing, um, it’s not me. Really.
raven
Willie Nelson – Railroad Lady
sab
@WaterGirl: That gets me off the hook. Thank you WaterGirl.
Betsy
I love your style, especially the trains!
Redshift
Wow!
J.
These are beautiful! You are a very talented old railroader. Thanks for sharing your art with us.
Sure Lurkalot
These are lovely to view, there’s an inviting, look further quality to all of them.
I like the pears because it reminds me of an art project long ago where we picked a subject and created small pieces in different media to be mounted on a board—water color, tempera, woodcut, oil, ink, etc. Mine was an apple and it came out ok (I are not an artist). The instructor for that class was a favorite.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@Sure Lurkalot: the 4 pears were actually a beginner class project on for basic watercolor techniques. Glazing, linear, wet on wet and wet on dry
JPL
These are lovely, and the plum blossom is spectacular.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@MagdaInBlack: Me too!
WaterGirl
@raven: I think of that as a Jimmy Buffett song. Looks like both Jimmy and Willie were singing a Jerry Jeff Walker song. I had no idea.
Always loved the song.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I also really like the Westport painting. Thanks for posting these!
zhena gogolia
@LivinginExile: The colors are great.
raven
@WaterGirl: The Texas Troubadour from Buffalo New York! I remember when Buffet would play Ruby Gulch solo!
WaterGirl
@raven: Really? I must have missed Jimmy Buffett at Ruby Gulch. Great bar and music venue.
raven
@WaterGirl:
How Jerry Jeff Walker Helped Put Jimmy Buffett on the Road to ‘Margaritaville’
raven
@WaterGirl: I helped built it.
WaterGirl
@raven: Really?!!?!!!
MazeDancer
Lovely work.
The train is especially well done.
SkyBluePink
The colors are so wonderfully vibrant!
Exquisite and lovely paintings.
raven
@WaterGirl: Oh yea, you know the sign was done by Frank Gallo
trollhattan
[Waves at Grumpy] Like your work very much. Sacramento Valley oak tree captures our now-typical smoky fall weather quite well. And I had to laugh when I googled SP 6356 and this is the first image that pops up. IDK if I’ve seen it here in Sac, possible at one of the rail fairs, but its cousin SP 6151 is a local staple. Handsome big boy.
WaterGirl
Reminder:
If you would like your talent featured in the Artists in Our Midst series, send me an email message. Don’t be shy! There is one more Artist posts in the queue, and one more Author post, i believe, so please get in touch if you would like to be featured.
StringOnAStick
Grumpy, you have such a range of topics and the skill shown on all of them is impressive! Thanks so much for sharing them and your experiences and hints; you’ve inspired me to get back at it again. I’m lucky to have a local community college to take classes at now.
I started playing with watercolors 6 years ago and then stopped when I was depressed over the loss of my soul kitty. Before I stopped I upgraded to decent brushes and heavier weight paper because all that taping and stretching to prepare a page was a pain and water washes are such a part of the medium and the thinner papers warp badly. I switched to the Dr. Ph Martin’s liquid watercolors because they are nontoxic and there’s no issues with little flecks of uncrushed pigments, and because cats like to drink out of my water glass; the colors are vibrant.
MagdaInBlack
@raven: Well, that took me right back to a dive bar in Sheridan, Illinois in the ’70’s.
SFBayAreaGal
@Grumpy Old Railroader: I love your painting of Pigeon Point Lighthouse. I’m about 45 minutes to an hour from it, depending on time of day and day of week.
My favorite lighthouse. A great place to stop and visit on the way to Santa Cruz.
I’ve stayed at the hostel at the lighthouse a few times.
FYI, Pigeon Point Lighthouse received all the money it needed to make the repairs.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@StringOnAStick: I’ll have to give those a try. Honestly some of the paint ingredients scare me especially the cadmiums so nontoxic sounds very appealing
Grumpy Old Railroader
Last I knew SP6356 had been sold to Arizona Central. Don’t know if it still lives or has been scrapped. The SP6151 was a little different equipped with steam generators for passenger service. BTW I live in Sun City in Lincoln and spent the majority of my RR career in Roseville and Sacramento
trollhattan
@Grumpy Old Railroader:
Excellent! Guessing you were working for the railroad when the ammo train blew up in Roseville? That seemed
funinteresting.CarolPW
@Grumpy Old Railroader: We lived in Sacramento for years, and were there when the Rail Museum opened. Lovely still nights before the opening, and we could leave all the bedroom windows open (second floor) and listen to the whistles of the steam trains as they came into town. It was magical.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@trollhattan: I was actually working in Sacramento at that time but lived close enough to Antelope and I80 that the front window broke from concussion. I have a ton of pics from that day if you are interested. LBHolder99 at Gmail and I can send you a link
RSA
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Beautiful work. Thanks for sharing.
That first piece is also remarkable, I think. If someone had said, “This is from famous painter so-and-so’s Fauvist period,” I would not have blinked.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@CarolPW: One of my favorite jobs was working the Isleton Branch Line that begins where CSRM is in Old Sac (around 1973)
Grumpy Old Railroader
Thank you everyone for the comments. Very cathartic. This train is departing the depot now
CarolPW
@Grumpy Old Railroader: Ha! I even know where that runs (grew up in the Delta). My favorite passenger ride was through the Feather River Canyon.
My great grandfather worked on building the railroad lines and my grandparents grew up in Auburn. The families were miners in Cornwall and came to California probably because they were useful doing the tunnels and road cuts over the Sierras. Some ended up working in the silver mines.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
When Wife and I lived in Key West in the early ’70s Jerry Jeff and Jimmy were playing parties and bars for drinks and tips. Nice guys.
My favorite is the plum blossoms, but the waterfront waves are really well done too. Mom took up watercolor after she retired, we have lots of her work still.
WaterGirl
Grumpy Old Railroader, big thanks for sharing your art with us!
Heidi Mom
Lovely! And your first real painting isn’t bad either.
Laura Too
Beautiful, thanks for sharing!
Kattails
Coming in very late, maybe you’ll check back later… I think you have a real propensity for detail as seen in the locomotive. Obviously a subject you’re familiar with but you also understand the curves and how the light plays off the surfaces. And the perspective, which in this case could be a stinker to do. How you compressed the lettering on the side, and enough detail suggested in the mechanical bits. And very good distance and reflections in the beach on the second one down (Unknown). Lovely work and so fun to see your own efforts and progress. Thanks for sharing with us!
Yellows: I only use cadmiums for oils, and then only Gamblin because theirs claim to be inert. I find them too opaque for watercolor. For some lovely yellows in watercolor I use, after years of experimentation, Benzimidazolone yellow (Schmincke Aureolin modern or M. Graham, PY 151) which is a lemon yellow, and Sennelier Yellow Lake (PY 150 nickel azo yellow which leans toward the gold, super useful color). If you haven’t found Jane Blundell’s color charts or Handprint online discussing watercolor pigments in detail you really must look them up, I only ran across the a couple of years ago. Game changer. Blundell has done watercolor swatches of virtually every color out there by many manufacturers and shares this data here.
Grumpy Old Railroader
@Kattails: Great advice. Yes Schminke Aurolin yellow and M. Graham Lemon yellow are on my palette. I use a basic palette with a few blues, reds and yellows. I’ll have to try the Sennelier paints. Thanks for the tip.
My goto book a color charts is Stephen Quiller’s “Color Choices.” But you piqued my interest and I’ll take a look at Blundell’s book. And thanks for the link. That will be my next rabbit hole adventure!
Thank you for the complements and advice
Miss Bianca
@MagdaInBlack: I love the Flowering Plum too!