I love traveling by rail, though these days I don’t often get the chance to do it. So the next best thing is hanging out with historic trains—and sketching them, of course.
Besides, you know I’m a sucker for vintage lettering and logos—and a logo hound at a train museum is like a kid in a candy store.
It’s on my list today to refill the pans in my paintbox—starting with indigo, which is most in need of it. Before I moved to Washington, I didn’t use indigo—it just wasn’t a color I needed often, and if I did, I could mix a reasonable facsimile. But now that I live here, and the hillsides in the distance look like the above sketch for so much of the year… Well, indigo might just be the color I use most often.
(When I travel in the desert, though, I stock up on my reds and ochres…)
I did both of these sketches on the same road trip. What I love best about traveling this way is that it makes it so easy to see many facets of a complex country—all in one long stretch. If you want to go from a place where the buildings are so tall you have to look up to see the sky…
…to a landscape so vast you can see both ends of a freight train at once…
…all you have to do is get in the car and drive.
As much as I love road trips, my hands-down favorite way to get between Tacoma, WA and Portland, OR is by train. Especially along the Puget Sound—where the tracks run literally inches from the shore—the views are absolutely gobsmacking. On this day, I was lucky enough to have a flawlessly sunny afternoon (in April that’s tantamount to a miracle round these parts) for my solo trip, and a return ticket at sunset. And best of all, the lovely conductor at the Portland station saw me sketching in the lobby—when he came to me in the boarding queue, he pointed at my sketchbook, gave me a wink, and assigned me a window seat on the west side of the packed train.
Wherever you are, Mr. Conductor, you completely made my day. Thanks a million.
