Where I Stand Sunday

Steps in progression..

first I stood over the inside elevator grate, where they dump the grain from the trucks.

which is right inside that lighted doorway...

Next I stood on this platform, in this cage...

with doors shut and pushed the UP button.  Up, up, up about 150 feet inside the elevator.

So I could stand here...

at the top of the elevator. Tyler (my boss) is standing there with me.  I am so afraid of heights..but I wanted so badly to go up here and see my world from a different perspective.  Wow!

To the west...

to the North...you can see the new CORN bunker in the center of the photo.

Oh look!  There's my car and the fertilizer shed and the scale where the trucks pull on to weigh their grain!

My house and property are in those nearest set of trees - right in the center along the horizon. 

Another view from above.  Ya,  Kansas IS flat in many parts...but where there are trees, I think it helps to break up the landscape.  I got a new view of my 'hood' from up here.

A close-up of the tallest part of the drive-inside elevator.

Oh look, Steve is coming back from the West pit - having dumped his load of milo into the bins there.  Better get back to it.



A few more shots and I am ready to descend back to the ground.

All I can say is, "Very cool!!"

Where I Stand Sunday is an ongoing photo essay examining the different places I spend my life standing. Too often we take for granted the everyday places we spend our lives walking on. If you'd like to join me and a few others (who faithfully post this day) by posting a photo on Sunday of places you've been on your blog/photo hosting site/website, leave me a message or a comment and we will include you in our fun.

The Midway Co-op Grain Elevator at Bellaire, Kansas

This was the progress of three days worth of work, thought I would put it all in one post, so there would be no need to flip back and forth between days. I thought about making the sky a little bluer in contrast to the gray of the buildings. I want the painting to dry a little before I put the lettering on the top part of the 6 siloed structure. The more I live here, the more I learn about and appreciate the use of these monoliths of the flatlands. For me, this one is way more detail than I usually get in to.

Tried the lettering today and discovered I needed to maybe do it right away, before I had been painting all day already...I might do a better job. I want to obscure the words a little, so it could be any Midway Co-op grain facility, but that will take more work and planning, than I did on today's try. I am on to another landscape - the toning and the rough sketch, so far. It's the grain bin on my property. I don't think it has ever been used. It just sits there and I refuse to get rid of it, cause I like to look at it. It has character and it's right out the north studio window. It'll be a snowscene. Sorry, for those of you who are a little tired of that stuff....

I am in paintaholic's heaven today, 7 hours at the easel!!

Elevator (work in progress) and Attack of the Redbird

This is where I started today. Having difficulty with the greys I got out my "grayscale" and value finder and was able to get a grip on the 4 - 5 values of the gray.



Don't know how much detail I will include...there are so many pieces of scaffolding and braces behind the structure. I want it to read right, but I don't think I will 'noodle' it.
That's not the point of the painting.

On another note, during the past several days, we have been under attack from a redbird.
He sits in the evergreen tree on the corner of our house and pecks insistently at his reflection on the windowpane in the spare bedroom. I put up newspaper inside the window, to distract his reflection, but he is still at it in a frenzy. It's a 'territorial male thing'. I want him to stay - and I want him to not kill himself. What's a mother to do?

A Portrait and a WIP

"Louis and Rosa Mae"

11" x 14" frame - original pastel and charcoal pencil on Canson

These are my paternal grandparents. They lived in the southeast Missouri town of Sikeston. I have many fond memories of visiting them when I was younger. They ran a farm for many years where my cousins and I had lots of fun - getting into everything and learning lots!

Here is my current work in progress on the easel. It is the grain elevators along the railroad tracks at Bellaire, which is just across the highway from me.

(Thanks for your encouragement awhile back, Mark.)

It started with a toning of red oxide acrylic paint.

Then I sketched in the outline of the silos and building.

I layered in the sky and worked darkest darks out to the light on the sunny side of the shapes.

I have a dilemma as the photo was taken from the parking lot in front of the co-op building and I caught just the top of the building...I had included it in the painting, but if you don't know about the configuration of where you stand to look at the monsterous towers from below, you won't know what that funny edge is on the bottom of the painting. It's interesting to me, I feel the need to leave it there, but to a viewer, who doesn't have the experience of "where I stood" it will be confusing. Therefore, today's challenge is taking that part out and continuing the elevators down to the bottom of the painting.