Main Street - Work in Progress

A sketch of building elevations from an early 20th Century Main Street are a work in progress from Art by Burnsland. Keep on reading to see an alternate version of this artwork down below. And I am considering this to be a work in progress. Read about that down below, too.

During many of our Kansas trips, we often end up going through some small towns, and we have some similar small towns close to home, too. Most of those small towns have a main street. Many of them make it easy by actually naming the street Main Street, although some of the towns have different names for their main street.

Most of those main streets (or even Main Streets) have buildings that were built in the early 20th Century. That is actually just a guess, but based on similar architecture, you can figure that all of these buildings were built around the same time, give or take 20 years.

I always enjoy seeing these quaint streets and their interesting architecture. Perhaps that comes from seeing Main Street USA in Disneyland or the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, but the real streets are even better than those make-believe streets. The main streets don’t have that much traffic anymore, because most small towns have been bypassed by major highways these days. No one wants to be slowed down by having to drive through an old small town. If I am trying to get somewhere, I might feel that way, too. But if we are looking to explore, this is just the kind of thing we like to see.

Only Temporary

Those old buildings won’t last forever. Historical societies and town preservation societies will do what they can. People will fix them up and keep them looking nice as long as they can. But those old buildings will not last, even with all of that care.

Of course, that is true for most any building. Or anything else, for that matter. Nothing is permanent. I have lived long enough to see that over and over again. We are always having to repair or replace something. Some will say, “They don’t make things to last like they used to.” But even those old things did not last forever, which is why we have these newer things that aren’t lasting forever.

Do not put your hope in things that will not last. Instead, put your hope in God, who is eternal.

In earlier times you established the earth; the skies are your handiwork. They will perish, but you will endure. They will wear out like a garment; like clothes you will remove them and they will disappear. But you remain; your years do not come to an end. - Psalm 102:25-27

About the Artwork

This artwork is really just a preliminary sketch and not a finished product. I plan to eventually finish this out to look more complete instead of just like a sketch. The lines are not straight, nothing is at a proper angle, things are not spaced correctly. This was just a sketch to explore what was in my brain. And by the way, it is not based on any actual street, but just ideas based on all that we have seen in different places.

But I did like this sketch enough to share it here. I like the loose feel of it, and the sketch makes it look even more fanciful. So I decided to go ahead and share it here, and share later progress in the future whenever I have some progress to share.

I sketched this in blue because I plan to draw over it later with black lines. But when I looked at it, it looked a lot like the old blueline construction drawings. When I started out in the engineering business, blueprints (white lines on blue paper) had already been replaced by blineines (blue lines on white paper), and those were eventually replaced by electrostatic copies (such as Xerox). So I gave the background a bit of a paper look to even more resemble one of those old blueline plans

Back in those days, we would occasionally come across an old blueprint of something, and those were always interesting to see, too. So I decided to make this artwork look like that, too. With just a few clicks and pencil strokes, I could change the background to blue and the lines to white, and this is what I came up with:

It looks pretty good, doesn’t it? So now you can take your pick of which one you like better!

And stay tuned for further updates to these Main Street buildings. I will probably branch off and do some other art first, but I won’t forget about this, either.

As always, this artwork was created using the Procreate App and an Apple Pencil on my iPad.