Have you ever played one of those Hidden Object games, like Mystery Case Files? There are tons of them out there and they are wildly successful. I find myself marveling at the game designer’s abilities to draw a cluttered room or landscape. Everything in those has to be drawn with enough detail to be recognizable for what it is and still be obscured enough to be realistic, or at least visually interesting. As impressed as I am with that talent, I have little or no desire to try and develop it. I find that I get bored trying to draw all of the minutiae that lies in a landscape, cityscape or interior. I quickly find myself reverting back to symbolic scribbles to represent buildings or baskets or whatever, just to try and fit in more detail. I prefer to work on closely cropped images and try to find the angles that are most interesting to me. Last night’s EDM challenge, draw your neighborhood store, presented a different problem. It was still a cityscape type drawing, but there were some interesting ways to crop the view. I initially wanted just to do the corner post of the building with the trash can and the Dr. Pepper sign. But I also wanted to get their name in the picture.
Neighborhood groceries like Dunn’s Food Center are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. They are independently owned and operated and just can’t compete with the large chain store prices. Our town used to have three branches of this store, as well as at least four other neighborhood stores. Between the Wal*Marts and the Homelands, they just couldn’t survive. As a capitalist, I think that’s the way it should be. If you can’t hold on to your market, you fall by the wayside. Dunn’s has a niche in that they don’t sell beer and are not open on Sundays. Many of the local Churches flock to support them. That’s not only true to Mr. Dunn’s vision, but well planned marketing.
However, as a community member, I miss walking to Mike’s Minimart for a loaf of bread and some eggs. You could get a fistfull of his freshly made beef jerky and a cream soda for the walk back. When gas prices began soaring, I thought maybe we would see a resurgance of these places. I’m always hopefull that we will. Until then, I like to visit Dunn’s at least every other week. Even if it’s just for a loaf of bread and some eggs.
Your writings are very inspiring to me–and your sketching lively and true to yourself.
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