Silver Ship Drawings

Silver Ship Front Elevation 1977 

 

 The working drawings for the Silver Ship were hand drafted by Gene. The set of original graphite on vellum drawings are now in the special collections department of the San Diego State University Love Library. At some point the Library will have searchable jpeg 2000 scans of these drawings. 

 

Although intended as building documents, the drawings remain as powerful visual statements in themselves. Genes own interest in the drawings, beyond their usefulness as construction documents, has been the potential to turn them into dynamic radiant graphics. He developed a technique of producing full size lithographic negatives from the original pencil drawings. These negatives were used to generate "blue line" drawings, that he then went back in and hand colored with prismacolor pencils. The ammonia based "blue line" process has led to a breaking down of the paper pulp, and these documents now are extremely fragile. We are currently working on producing high resolution images of these masterpieces before they are too fragile to handle.

 

 Silver Ship Plan View (not the final version)

Silver Ship conceptual sketches