NH Hudson

 

I drew this seven years ago as the preliminary sketch for a color piece I was going to do. Then it struck me that I was planning on doing a color piece on a black locomotive. I decided to stick with the graphite sketch.

I got to the point where I could draw the body of the locomotive in my sleep. The New Haven I-5s were fairly straight forward and elegantly clean looking locomotives. I had trouble, as I always do when I draw these guys, with the drivers and the running gear. I think it came out pretty well.

It took me a couple of weeks to complete this one -- in part because I kept drawing the wheels over and over and over again.  I was also never satisfied with the smoke. But looking back on it now, I kind of like it.

One of the last times I saw Bob Buck he showed me a photograph of an I-5 he had taken on a visit to a relative's house. It may have been his grandmother, I can't remember and I wished I had wrote the story down. Anyway, as he looked at the photograph, which was taken at line side, he marveled that he had taken such a risk. He said the locomotive could have thrown a break shoe or dropped some other piece of equipment and it would have probably instantly killed him or at least badly injured him. Something I never thought about very much in all the years I have looked at photographs of steam locomotives running at speed.