From Steve's Drawing Table:
Down A Sedalia Road, Pen and Ink
Driving back roads and old towns Colorado is fun for me. There are many such places in the mountains and also quite a few in the front range around Denver. Many of the buildings and streets seem to have their own story.
This pen and ink is a drawing of a back alley in Sedalia, a little town about 30 miles south of Denver. It sets right by the railroad, although it was settled well before the railroad came through in 1871: settled in 1859, just a year after the camp of Denver began. The town sits among the beautiful foothills of the Rockies that rise up to the west, and along Plum Creek. In fact, Plum was its original name; the name was later renamed after Sedalia, Missouri, by a settler from that state. The town has remained fairly small and rural over the years. I took some photos there in March of this year, and this alley caught my eye, from which I created the drawing. Alleys to me are an interesting artifact of old towns, as they were primarily a venue to bring one's equestrian transportation to the stable at the rear of the property. They are often overlooked and left unchanged, and can yield some interesting relics of bygone eras. This alley is simply lined with several weathered barns and sheds, railroad-tie fences, trees and utility poles; the dirt road cuts southwest to the next block and through the town. The morning sun cast some interesting shadows and textures which I tried to capture in the piece.
I created it with metal-nib pens and India ink on watercolor paper, using stippling (dots), hatch and cross-hatch lines, spattering and some dripping. The sky and ground were masked to prevent getting marked up; I had a lot of fun making it. It's currently showing at ROX Gallery in Littleton.
