Colored Pencil Drawings

This series of Tom's drawings are all Prismacolor colored pencil on smooth bristol board, done in studio. This is a new medium for Tom upon retiring from his industrial design career. The over 200 colors available greatly expand the possibilities of the pencil as a medium, in comparison to his life-long use of graphite pencil for black and white plein air drawing expression.

Bean Cloud Gate

July 21, 2021

The “Bean” (Cloud Gate) sculpture in downtown Chicago, by Anish Kapoor, is one of the most beautiful and engaging contemporary sculptures in the world.

Fallingwater House

July 21, 2021

Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1939 masterpiece of residential architecture in Bear Run Pennsylvania, is arguably the most important contemporary house in history.

Alden Dow Home Studio

July 21, 2021

The 1941 Alden B. Dow home and studio, in Midland, Michigan is one of the most important contemporary American buildings of the 20th century.

Bodie Ghost Town

July 21, 2021

Bodie Ghost Town in the California Bodie Hills, east of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, is the most extensive ghost town I have ever visited. It is spooky but very interesting.

The Old Iron Ore Dock in Marquette is one of my favorite structures in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was built as a gigantic, purely functional iron ore gravity feed dock on the waterfront in 1931. Decommissioned in 1971, it is now a hauntingly beautiful, symmetrical, cathedral-like edifice to the iron mining industry in that region.

Ghost Cave

November 9, 2021

Ghost Cave at Pictograph Cave State Park is near Billings, Montana. There are several caves in the park with impressive Native American pictographs up to 2,100 years old. I really like how the low cave opening is centered between the two huge rock masses.