I already had a barpic of this era done, but I sold it and wanted an original for my portfolio, so I did another
one.
The one from the first series is at
angelfire.com/az3/azartist37a/1880smed.html
The one I sold is at
angelfire.com/az3/ciab/1880s.html
That one had more of a southwestern theme. I didn’t want to do that with this one. I wanted the
background and fashions to be more like what you might have seen in the Eastern U.S. and Europe, fashions more
commonly seen in art, catalogs and other publications of the time.
The guys in the left middle ground are wearing some kind of military uniforms from the 1880’s. I’m not
sure of the ranks or branch of service, they were just from some picture I found. One of them is pointing to
the guy next to them. He’s a deranged old miner who’s gone crazy from too many days in the sun. He’s planning
to say something obscene to the guy in front of him.
The guy in the middle foreground with the rifle; while I was still sketching out the basic layout of the
page, I had a huge empty area where he’s standing. Since I already had the area for the bird picked out, that
area needed something. I also needed to figure out a way to disguise the page division so I made him holding
a rifle, the basic design is a Winchester. I made it about an inch longer than it should be but oh well. The
guy is no one in particular, just an amalgam of different beard and hairstyles I’ve seen in pictures of this era.
The woman behind and to the left of him is miming playing the violin. I just wanted kind of an unusual pose for
someone in that area. Directly above the miner is a drawing taken from a picture of Myron Cohen, an obscure
Jewish comedian from the 50’s and early 60’s. (I just liked the expression on his face).
That’s me on the right with the dance-hall girl. The sound of brass instruments gives the woman directly
above me a splitting migraine. The little girl to her left noticed it and stopped playing.
The bird on the far right is a common ground dove. There are tons of those around where I live.
They’re dumb birds. Parenthetically, I ran over one of them one time. He just sat in the road and watched
my car approach.
Generally, this is not one of my best ones, mostly because many of the fashions of this time were plain
and unadorned, lending themselves to little detail or variety. But it’s certainly better than the first one.
