The Back Story...
The painting for “The Great Race” was a lesson in pre-planning and organization. When I was contacted by the “Traveling the West Show and Sale” founder and organizer Ken Featherstone, about being the featured artist and poster artist, I knew the image would have to be out of the ordinary. So we brainstormed what that image would be. We came up with the idea for a race that would feature all the different modes of transportation that helped to open up the American West to the regular folks.
It was difficult to pare it down to just a few, but after talking with some experts in different fields, I settled on the horse (of course), the 440 Steam Locomotive, the Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny, as it’s more commonly known) biplane. I had to include the stagecoach, the covered wagon (chuck wagon) and a model T pickup truck. I thought long and hard about using a conestoga wagon, but decided against it as most were big lumbering beasts that were powered by oxen. I didn’t believe it would make for a very believable image in a race. Choosing the car model was the most difficult decision for me as there were so many that deserved to be there. But in the end I chose the very first production pickup truck, the Model T.
Once the choices about which vehicles to use had been made, I needed to do some thumbnail drawings to work out the composition, which included staging the vehicles to make sure they weren’t all the same size and the most important ones were most prominent. Things like making the covered wagon larger than the stagecoach, not because the covered wagon was more important necessarily, than the stagecoach, but I couldn’t have two vehicles that were so similar, be the same size, one had to be further off in the distance. So I put the cowboys on their mounts front and center with the steam locomotive for scale and motion. That 440 locomotive was always going to be the focal point, not only for its size, but for the impact it had on opening the American West. I didn’t use the first version of the 440 Steam Locomotive because I felt it looked too frilly and like something out of an amusement park ride, so I used one that came later. It had the visual impact I was going for and I brought back some of the paint scheme that was reminiscent of the early models. However, I did put American flags from 1869 on the front. This is an homage to the fact that the Transcontinental Railroad was finished in that year.
When I had an idea as to where everything would go, I started to schedule photo shoots. But before I snapped any reference, I needed to nail down my locomotive and biplane images since I wouldn’t be able to do a photo shoot for these. I contacted many train photographers, but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for, so I did my drawing using many train photos for reference until I got the angle and paint scheme I wanted. Then I did the Curtiss Jenny biplane in a similar fashion. These were my anchor pieces and I would take my photo reference to work with these images. Now that I had these two nailed down, I could do my photo shoots, or use photos I had taken during previous photo shoots, making sure to keep the light source consistent. I had already photographed a stagecoach the year before at a photo shoot in Bannock, MT. So I contacted the owner of a chuck wagon that I knew in Wickenburg, AZ and he agreed to let me take the photos I needed. In the painting, the owner of the wagon is riding shotgun next to his wagon master. They had never run their horses while hitched to the wagon (never a good idea to give the horses the idea of running when they are hooked up to the wagon, it could be a catastrophe), but they were absolutely great about running them for the first time at this shoot.
After that I called the Prescott Antique Auto Club and asked to come to their next meeting where I gave a short presentation, showed my sketch and made a plea for anyone who owned a Model T pick up truck to contact me for a shoot. To my surprise, I was contacted by two different owners who wanted me to use their cars, so I shot them both. I photographed the truck from all possible angles to give me options. The truck wasn’t moving when I photographed it. Later, in the painting I created the illusion of movement by spinning the wheel rim spokes and adding the flying dust.
The cowboys were the last to be photographed and I used two working cowboys I’ve used in the past. We work well together and they’re always game for anything I suggest, especially hard riding scenes. They’re great horsemen. We met on late Autumn day at a ranch they were working at to help gather and ship cattle. We held the photo shoot during their lunch break on an abandoned airstrip that happened to be on the property.
After all my photo reference had been gathered, I chose the best photos from which to work, drawing them onto the canvas and started the painting. Complete painting time was a couple of months of continuous painting, the longest painting time I’ve ever spent on a canvas. There were so many mechanical components that had to be absolutely correct, that I took my time and triple checked it all as I went along. The dust was so integral to have the movement, speed and light I wanted. It was a big part of this work that helped to make it believable.
I love these types of paintings, where the old ways start to meet the new technologies head on. Sometimes in a good way that was very helpful, but not always. And of course, at the time, not everyone was a fan of the changing times. It’s a challenge that we feel to this very day. I guess some things will never change.
~~~Steve Atkinson, OPA 2015
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