My Great-great grandfather William Beard built an opera house in North Woodstock, NH in 1897. It burned down in 1908 along with the Fairfield hotel, which was located next to the opera house and was owned by William's uncle (building in bg). Many years ago, I got to visit the town and went looking for the opera house, not realizing that it had burnt down. The town historian informed me of the fire, but also told me that he had the original blue prints for the opera house. He made me a set, and I proceeded to recreate the opera house in a CAD program. I then took a hidden line drawing from the CAD program and brought it into photoshop to render the scene. Oddly, the only parts on this image that were not drawn and are an actual photo are the blueprints on the sawhorse. Those from the original prints. They were black lines on white paper, but I changed them to the cyanotype. I've included some detail shots.
This image won the 2009 Photoshop World Guru Award for Illustration.
Beard's opera
Looking towards Main St. The little girl in the window is my great-grandmother. Her dad, William Beard build the opera house, and in this image, I'm having her overlook the construction from her great-uncle's hotel, The Fairfield. I colorized and redrew her image from an old photograph of her.
Detail of sawhorse table. The blue prints are the actual drawings from which I worked to create the CAD drawing.
The wanna be opera singer.
The heckler.
Detail of the light and flooring. Each board was indivually created and placed, and not done as one large area.
CAD Line drawing that was used to create the final image.