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Engine Tracks, Wichita Falls, Texas
by Andrew Harmantas
Watercolor on D'Arches cold press paper
Original Painting Image size 15" x 22"
Framed size 21" x 28" (matted, professionally framed, under glass)
Just across the Red River from my home in Oklahoma is the city of Wichita Falls, a crew change point along the Fort Worth
& Denver Railway, so there were usually locomotives there awaiting assignment, and plenty of passing trains. When I
began visiting there, the engines were in Burlington red and gray, later receiving Burlington Northern green and
black, as painted here. Being in Texas, the facility was sprawling, right up against the downtown business district.
So when my wife went shopping at Sears, I could walk a couple of blocks and spend my afternoon watching the action
and chatting with railroaders, and some railfan buddies who would join me. It was a pleasant place, lapsing only
occasionally into a lull, where all that could be heard was the soft idling of the diesels and the thumping sound
the compressors made to maintain air pressure. This is a watercolor, done in traditional style, with no white paint.
White areas, such as the diagonal nose stripes on the engines ("motors," in FW&D parlance), are areas of white paper
left unpainted, meaning I painted around them. This calls for pre-planning and a steady hand. That's why oil
painting is considered an additive process, while watercolor is a reductive process, or "negative painting," where
objects are left unpainted while the background is worked on first.
Price: $425 plus $25 US shipping
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