What color scheme to use

I have 2 thoughts about what color scheme to use for a night time snow image for my recycle piece. Should I go with blues or grayscale. If I do grayscale the streetcar would still be red. Almost like it’s in an old black and white photo. I suppose the decision will be made for me by what plastic bags I have. That’s what I’ll be looking at today. 

Here’s the photo I’m working from and AI images showing the color schemes. I do like the blue one better, but blue bags are harder to come by. I do have a lot of gray bags left over from last years Raven piece.

The decision may be out of my control.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

You will be happy to know…

You will be happy to know that I’ve decided to use an actual photo instead of AI for inspiration for my recycle piece. It’s a photo of a streetcar crossing the Smithfield Street bridge. I will simply it a lot, turn it to night with snow, change the streetcar to one I rode, and get rid of the buildings in the background and put in the steel mills along the river. I’ve had this photo for a while so I’m not even sure where I found it online.

Here’s the photo. Since the streetcar I rode was the 35 Shannon Library.

“What Remains”

Once upon a time, Pittsburgh’s red and cream streetcars were an ordinary part of my childhood. I rode the Shannon–Library car to school, to Saturday art classes at the Carnegie Museum, and into the city. On this bridge, my grandfather once crashed the streetcar he was driving.

The mills that filled the horizon are gone, and so is the car I remember. I made this piece from discarded plastic bags — a material that refuses to vanish — to hold a place and a time that have.

Thanks for reading 

Chris

Before plastic

I just can’t get excited about any of these ideas that I’ve been creating. I definitely want the streetcar, but the rest of it was not working. I had to try something different with the streetcar. So here we are….empty wooden bench with a paper bag that has been left behind. I will be making this out of plastic bags which contradicts what these items were made from in the past. A paper bag made of plastic in my piece. A wood bench made of plastic. Now of course both are made of plastic. I thought about adding a glass bottle, but it might be too small in the image to know what it is. Of course it would add to the narrative since bottles are now plastic.

Thanks for reading.

Chris

I think we are there

I know you’re thinking that you’ve heard that before. My husband looked over the images and decided which one I should use to make my recycle piece. Plus we decided that if this is a memory the streetcar should be new and not rusted. 

So here’s the image of the memory. The memory is the hills of Pittsburgh, the steel mills, and of course the streetcar that was the 35 Shannon Library car that I rode. The scene is not accurate for the route, but this is a memory not true to reality. The image needs some editing that I will do when I start making the piece.  I suppose this may end up being 18 by 24 so the details won’t be so tiny. I will print out the pattern at 16 by 20 and 18 by 24 to visualize what it will look like. I prefer 16 by 20 just in terms of the work involved. 

A couple versions of the image follow. So this is where I am and what I’ve decided to do. I was so obsessed with the rust idea that I was stuck on it and couldn’t let it go. Now I’m just doing the memory of Pittsburgh. No more rust, no ghosts. The new streetcar will be easier to create vs the rusted one. So I have made my life simpler. 

Thanks for reading.

Chris