American Cocker Spaniel's Progress

This is actually a photo manipulation with a few added bits of paint. It's intended use is to be made into a decal that will go on the flank of an HO scale locomotive's tender. This particular locomotive is an 1870s American class, which tended to be rather ornate locomotives. A common trend was portraits and landscapes painted on the sides of the tender or headlamp. By the 1880s, this gave way to simple lineart, and finally by the 1890s, black became the standard.

Given that I wanted this model to have a painting on the side, I started playing around with ideas as to what that painting should be. I knew I wanted it to be a tongue in cheek reference, and since the locomotive is named "The Lady", I had to include my favorite cocker girl. I bounced around with the idea of her being either as she appeared in the films, or drawing something anthropomofic, perhaps even a bit risque. (That wasn't uncommon either. Some female portraits on the sides of locomotives could almost be considered soft core porn! Oh, the Victorian days) In the end I decided to stick with a feral Lady.

I also decided that I wanted to painting to be a variation of "American Progress", a painting that focused on manifest destiny. Showing the spirit of Columbia guiding the pioneers and the culture of America across the western frontier. I then decided that the best way to produce this would be to just take the painting, and an image of Lady, and mix, match, pull and prod, untull I have them photoshoped together. This way it would still look like the original painting, as I felt anything I created would not have the same look and atmosphere.

The end result is Lady standing in as the Spirit of Columbia (Complete with white crape) as she leads the pioneer spirit across the great plains. It looks pretty darn good considering that the end decal will be the size of a dime!  The painting will be produced in such a way that Lady will always be facing "west", regardless of the direction of travel of the locomotive.