Acrylic never stays wet for long, but I got my licks in while it counted. I’ve been taking a break from portraits (exhausting), and just painting some quick (or, in the case of Phil’s photograph, not so quick) light studies.
For Patty, leaving our corner was difficult: this one done during Open Studios to decorate her new walls in Portland. This car is the 1058, a PCC car from the 30’s. (The 1055 has a red stripe on it.)
The call boxes are evolutionary, I suppose, from the fire hydrants. Most major US cities removed their police and fire call boxes years ago. I understand that DC has a few remnants at street level, but they are
non-functioning. The ones in SF still work! Although they look similar, the function of police and fire boxes is very different. Fire call boxes were meant to be used by anyone who saw a fire nearby. (Break glass, pull hook once.) Police call boxes were used by patrolmen who carried a key to the boxes and who ‘rang in’ every 30 minutes to indicate that everything was under control. If a signal failed to appear, backup was sent to the location. Here’s an interesting account of the fire box operator on duty at the time of the 1906 earthquake. Funny that the early metrics for ROI on the callbox system were things like, ‘out of over 1700 fires reported this year, 70% of them were reported from call boxes before they could be seen from the top of City Hall’.
I went home after spending most of Christmas Day on the beach, and had an idea of a wash of greys accented with orange, some kind of dot field. I set out to do something more abstract, but my rough sketch achieved more edges than I expected, and two hours later it was finished. Sheila and family are enjoying a late Christmas present.
