Author Archives: peter_loughlin

John’s Geep

Posted by peter_loughlin
A close-up painting of a black Southern Railways GP38-2 locomotive crossing a concrete arch bridge

Acrylic on stretched canvas. 20 x 16 inches.

What’s a Geep? It’s a colloquial name for any locomotive in the Electro-Motive company’s General Purpose (“GP”) line. It’s pronounced ‘jeep”. Here we see a Southern Railways GP38-2 crossing the Big Black River Bridge just east of Vicksburg, Mississippi. It’s doubtful this particular locomotive ever actually crossed that bridge (the location is fairly far outside of Southern Railways territory), but as a special artistic project we are allowed a degree of creativity. This painting was commissioned by a very kind gentleman as a gift for his friend John Morgan. The GP38-2 is John’s favorite locomotive and the Big Black River Bridge is his favorite bridge. I was asked to combine them in one image, and to put John in the engineer’s seat. Look closely and you’ll see a tiny little portrait of him. Some artistic license was taken with the design details and mechanical features of the locomotive as well.

3003 on Ahsahka Bridge II

Posted by peter_loughlin
A painting of an orange and black diesel locomotive coming across a steel truss bridge, with forested hills in the background.

Acrylic on canvas panel. 7 x 5 inches.

Bountiful Grain & Craig Mountain GP30 #3003 crosses the old steel truss bridge at Ahsahka, Idaho, about four miles west of Orofino, in June 2023. This track is part of the old Camas Prairie Railroad line. She’s moving a string of condemned freight cars that had been stored on the disused tracks around Orofino, and taking them towards Lewiston for further disposal. The striking orange paint job on 3003 and her sister GP30 #2404 is a real standout among the greens, grays, blues, and browns of the Clearwater River canyon. This is one of two similar paintings I did of the same subject. This painting measures only 7 inches wide by 5 inches tall, so that is why the texture of the canvas shows through so strongly in this very close-up photo.

4300 in Tyler Yard

Posted by peter_loughlin
A painting of a white diesel switcher engine moving freight cars among industrial buildings, with a large cloud in the background.

Acrylic on canvas panel. 12 x 9 inches.

SW1200 #4300 moves a string of cars in the yard at Tyler, Texas. However, this is Tyler Texas as represented by Master Model Railroader #573 Mike Mackey on his HO scale Texas & St. Louis model train layout.

The painting presents this part of his layout as if it were the real world, and you were standing there at trackside. The white Kansas City Southern switcher locomotive is one of Mike’s favorite models. As model railroaders, we try to create realistic scenes and in our own minds we see them as if the mountains were full-size, the sunlight was beating down, and all the background distractions were absent. But even the best photographers often can’t eliminate the HVAC equipment, water heaters, windows, light fixtures, and other paraphernalia that surrounds the typical model railroad layout and wrecks the illusion of reality. Modelers also use “selective compression” to force a large scene to fit a small space. So in this painting I eliminated all those distractions, provided an uninterrupted sky, added industrial buildings stretching off into the distance, and brewed up an afternoon rain storm to boot. Part of my goal was to un-do that selective compression, and make the scene look BIG.

If you want to bring your layout to life in a painting, contact me and we’ll see what can be done.

Rustic Pickles II

Posted by peter_loughlin
Acrylic painting of four mason jars of fermenting pickles sitting in the sun on an unpainted window sill

Acrylic on stretched canvas, 12 x 12 inches.

These jars of home-fermented pickles really caught my eye as they sat on the windowsill of our vacation cabin. The cabin was cold, and the sunlight helped warm the jars to get their natural lacto-fermentation going. One jar is cucumbers, two are red beets, and one is golden beets. This replaces the first version of this painting, which was destroyed in the Tubbs Fire October 2017. Rustic Pickles II won a First In Category award at the 2023 Clearwater County Fair in Orofino, Idaho.

Flyin’ Away

Posted by peter_loughlin
Maker:S,Date:2017-10-17,Ver:6,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar02,E-Y

Acrylic on canvas. 24 x 18 inches.

This is a commissioned painting of Beechcraft B58 Baron N558TH over an idealized Caribbean scene, in late afternoon sun. One big challenge with this painting was recreating the luminous quality of the blue water, which I accomplished through glazing. When viewing the actual painting, this characteristic is particularly striking. Another challenge was the blue-purple-red designs on the airplane, which in reality are a color-changing paint which shows wildly different colors depending upon the angle of view and the strength of the light. I underpainted those with iridescent silver and covered that with colored glazes. The silver stripes are in iridescent silver. This is the second and only version of this painting, the first version having been destroyed in the Tubbs fire on October 9, 2017, Sonoma County, when it was approximately 50% complete.

Summer Storm I

Posted by peter_loughlin
Painting of rainstorm over a mountain lake, with bleached logs in foreground

Acrylic on canvas. 11 x 14 inches.

Summer rain storm over Big Bear Lake, Plumas County, California.

This is the second rendition of this painting. The first version was complete, framed, and already sold when it was destroyed in the Tubbs Fire of October 9, 2017, in Santa Rosa, California. The buyers asked that I re-paint it rather than refund their money, so I did. The second and only surviving version is what you see here. I am pleased that the buyers have the painting on display at the lodge they run, about a mile from the location where this was painted.

Seven-Zero-Four-Charlie-Charlie Over the Golden Gate

Posted by peter_loughlin
Acrylic painting of Beechcraft Baron N704CC flying over the Golden Gate Bridge

Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 12 inches.

This is my friend’s Beechcraft Baron #704CC in its natural habitat. Charlie Charlie is well known in the San Francisco Bay Area aviation community, having for years been owned by David “Scotty” Morris. He and the plane were regulars flying in and out of the plane’s home base at SFO. When Scotty passed away in 2013, shortly after the original version of this painting was finished, ownership of the plane passed to his son. I am honored that the family used a black-and-white rendering of this painting on Scotty’s headstone. There were some issues with the background of the original painting, so I re-painted it in 2016 and that is what is presented here.

I am pleased that this painting was on the cover of the American Bonanza Society Magazine’s May 2017 issue, in conjunction with an article I wrote about the plane for their “Beechcraft of the Month” feature.