Titanic – Analog Artist Digital World

I went to a Lunch and Learn at the Orange County Regional History Center. The them of the presentation was the Titanic. Some folks seated in front of me were sharing conspiracy theories about the Pandemic. They didn’t die so the pandemic to them was a nothing-burger.

The Titanic sailed into infamy when it struck an iceberg and sank on its maiden voyage in April 1912. It has been 114 years since the sinking and we are still talking about it. Author Emily Coughton decided to find out what happened to the survivors after the media frenzy died down. Emily also found connections to Central Florida among the survivors.

At 20 minutes to midnight on April 14, a lookout reported an iceberg straight ahead. The order was issued for hard to starboard. At 11:40pm the ship hits the iceberg. At 11:46pm the ships engines are put to stop. Water rushed into hold 1. At12:12am the first life boats were swung out and passengers are told to put life jackets on. Many believe the request is a hoax since the Titanic was believed to be unsinkable. At 12:40am the first lifeboat was launched on the starboard side forward.

1500 passengers of the Titanic died from the freezing waters that night. About 491 passengers survived.

Gerturde Mabelle Thorne was a first class passenger who survived. She was born with the last name of McMinn in San Francisco in 1875. In 1899 Gertrude married Harry Thorne. When she boarded the Titanic, she was the mistress of George Rosenshine. To hide the affair they boarded under the assumed names of George and Gertrude Thorne. George perished in the tragedy. Gertrude escaped in the last life boat. She sent a message from the Carpathia after being rescued, “Am safe – pray God George was rescued by another boat with the rest of the men.”

In 1913 Mabelle returned to the site of the sinking with two other widows. They threw Baskets of flowers into the water. A Chaplin conducted a short service.

In 1913, Gertrude married Richard Yanke in Stanford Connecticut. In the 1920 census they were listed as living together with a maid in Manhattan. Richard and Gertrude traveled extensively. Later in life they settled in Paris. Mabelle died in 1947 in Nice France. She would have lived 72 years having survived the sinking of the Titanic and WWII in German occupied France.

Because I have been working on my website, I noticed that I did not share the poster design for Romeo and Juliet here. The Site went down for a day and I spent 8 hours with techs at Bluehost trying to find out why the servers was scrambling all the elements of the site. Some tech scan had to be done over another 6 hours and I was so glad the when I woke up this morning everything had fallen back into place. Anything digital is mysterious and delicate. Anything not printed on paper will someday be lost.

The poster I designed for Romeo and Juliet pretty much hit the mark with the first pass. I had to work on refining the faces but otherwise my concept of an embrace that vaguely resembles a heart was accepted as is. As I painted Juliet grew younger and Romeo receded into the dark.

In part I was thinking of the scene from Titanic in which the young artist Jack held Rose from behind on the bow of the ship.

The challenge as always was that I did not know who would be cast in the parts. I covered most of Juliet’s face with the hilt of the sword. A previous version showed the sword stabbing flesh and I completely understand that needed to be implied not stated visually.

I had romeo reseed into the darkness and his face is partly hidden by the letter J.

Red shattered glass hints at the tragedy to come. Much of my time was spent making Juliet’s hand feminine and Romeo’s hands more masculine. The abstract nature of the hug makes understanding whose hands are whose a challenge. Had I depicted their bodies the arms might have made more sense but that would have detracted from the heart shape that their embrace creates at least in my mind.

The multi racial casting for the show resulted in some racist remarks on social media and I love that the Shakes stands up for absolute inclusivity. Whoever had the best audition was best for the part. That is the way any show should be cast.

Since I was working on the next season’s posters I didn’t get a chance to sketch the show. I need to get better about getting out of the studio when such an amazing sketch opportunity presents itself.