William Todd / Artist

[ Portfolio of Paintings and Digital Art & Design ]

14 Miles To Amboy

The first painting I did in this body of work

The Drifting Slacker

A scene looking eastward on Interstate 40 in eastern New Mexico, near Milagro

The Drifting Slacker II: Dream Car

In the Mojave Desert

Abandoned Gas Station

White's City, New Mexico. Carlsbad Caverns is in the hills in the distance.

Nighttime Drive

Galaxie in Glenrio

Abandoned on old Route 66 in Glenrio, Texas

San Fidel, New Mexico

The Blue Swallow

On Route 66 historical landmark in Tucumcari, New Mexico...Built in 1939, Mrs. Lillian Redman owned and ran the motel for nearly four decades since 1958. The Blue Swallow is now under the proprietorship of Dale & Hilda Bakke, who have been busy restoring the motel as a labor of love.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040104001728/http://blueswallowmotel.com/

Roy's Motel and Cafe

In Amboy, CA on Route 66...between Barstow and Needles, in the middle of the Mojave Desert...Location for a ton of movies (like the Hitcher), commercials, etc...the silence here is almost deafening.

Visit their excellent website!

http://web.archive.org/web/20040104001728/http://www.rt66roys.com/

The Longhorn Cafe of Glenrio, Texas

Glenrio is on a portion of what remains of Route 66 on the border of Texas and New Mexico. The Cafe was part of a gas station/motel/cafe/souvenir store.

Blinding Sun and Bug Splatters

One of my many solitary desert road trips...

I redid this image (minus the bug splatters and a few other changes) digitally for a cd package design. At first it was going to be on the cover, but the artist ultimately went for no design at all.

The Fortune Teller

Somewhere in New York City, near Times Square. I wonder if this woman could predict that she would be the subject of a painting...?

Take A Ride

One of my favorite pasttimes.

This painting was an experiment with text superimposed over image. Did it only once, but hey...it sold.

Autumn in Hemet

Outskirts Of Town

Spending my earlier years living just outside of a small town, I am to this day fascinated by the ambience of such a place. The lights from town a few miles away, the sounds and smells of the rural night, the slow and silent blinking of the red lights on the radio station antennas... it is a very peaceful memory. I have done numerous paintings like this.

Old Myford Road

In Orange County, California. It doesn't look like this anymore, the road is reconfigured, this area is now a parking area for farm equipment and is surrounded by new homes. The city of Tustin is on the horizon.

Thanksgiving Day

A not too typical Thanksgiving Day in Hemet, CA

The Motel In The Wind

The Santa Ana Winds are kicking up again...This motel was several miles out of my home town, and as a child, I would always be transfixed at the big motel sign glowing in red neon at night. I even remember trying to draw this scene with crayons when I was around 7 or 8 years old. The place is the Sun Liesure Motel, and it's still there today. Perhaps one day I will paint the scene at night, with its big red neon sign that probably has a letter or two now burnt out.

Pathway To Perpetua

A nice lady commissioned me to do...something. I did this scene from my imagination, depicting a sidewalk flanked by overgrown hedges that seem to suggest a bare minimum of maintenance...I wanted the place to seem other-worldy, dreamlike. The fog, trees and lush vegetation is all based on a camping trip in Oregon near Cape Perpetua, though this particular scene is fictional. And I love that name, Perpetua. When the lady came to get the painting, she was beyond pleased with it...she explained to me that she wanted something peaceful and nurturing to look at as she recovered from a very risky brain surgery she was about to undergo. I got the same thing from a friend who underwent chemotherapy, who wrote me a nice card...and it's things like that which make me realize why I'm really supposed to be doing this painting thing.

Motel Noir

A fictional scene commissioned by a movie director, he said he wanted a 50ish Florida motel, a place that seemed kitschy yet a place where something dark and violent could be taking place. Having his knowledge of film and genres, (he's a screenwriter as well), he painted a great scenario himself, in very cinematic terms, a springboard for me to "just go with it". The scan does not show to good effect a lot of the details...in the motel lobby, the sign, the Femme Fatale by the pool, the burning cigarette in the hand of the guy with the briefcase, or an ominous parting of a curtain in one of the motel room windows...other than these setpieces, make up your own story...what's REALLY going on?

This image was also available as a Giclee Print in a limited edition, but it was near the end of the gallery's run, so only a handful were sold, but the feedback that I got on it was always fabulous.

Exploring digital art, with programs like Photoshop, Painter, and various 3d programs, I would really like to revisit this entire image digitally...this will give me the opportunity to make some changes and additions and get the image even closer to what I first envisioned. As a painting, there were two ways I originally felt it could go....either loosely painted, with details barely suggested, or with close attention paid to details. I chose the latter. The details, modeling, architecture and lighting can now, in a high resolution 3d image, achieve some amazing, lush results; but the challenge, of course, is to create an image that is evocative and atmospheric and to NOT make it appear digital. Final digital image size would be around 22 x 44 inches.

I also have plans to do a huge digital image of what one could call "the World's Scariest Chinese Restaurant." Should be fun!

Desert Information

Hah? Actually, it's a marker for a roadside information kiosk to the left, just out of picture's frame. The kiosk contained desert information about a large sand dune area close by. Great...I just blew the mystery of the painting. This was somewhere south of Death Valley, CA, about 5 miles off the main highway. Travel Tip - Do not drive your car out onto sand flats, even if you see others doing it and/or you are driving a rental.

Airstreams And Swamp Coolers

Gilbert Crossroads

Gilbert, Arizona.

Crossroads Near Fort Sumner On A September Afternoon

Untitled Waitresses

The Mar-T Cafe in North Bend, Washington, location for the Double R Diner in the tv series pilot Twin Peaks (the rest of the series was shot on a set in L.A.)

The Mar-T Cafe is now Twede's Cafe, owned by Kyle Twede. It suffered an arson fire in 2000, but is now up and running again, for your Twin Peaks dining pleasure!

http://twedescafe.com/

The Motel Room And The Lazy Dog

The Mount Si Motel just outside of North Bend, Washington.

Desert Chase

Sci-Fi Fun in the Mojave!

The Racetrack

A remote dry lakebed in Death Valley, CA. There are scores of rocks there that move. Nobody has seen it happen, but over time they have left tracks in the dried mud. Lots of theories, many of them crackpot, like UFO's, earthquakes and magnetic forces. It's actually due to a strange set of conditions involving the weather.

Fran's Coffee Shop

In Hemet, CA.

Indio Date Shop

Honeydew Post Office

WAY off the mountains....Humboldt County, CA

A Bench At Zabriskie Point

Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. This painting was a mixed media experiment. The bench is made from thin layers of balsa wood, painted and fused onto the canvas with acrylic medium. Graffiti and wear and tear was then scratched or scuffed onto the balsa wood bench to simulate the real thing. The foreground was built up with a few layers of acrylic modeling and texture paste, to set it off from the background.

The above images comprise about one third of the paintings I originally had here, and in the next few days I hope to at least have available for display what I originally had, until the new site is ready.

Below are a few more images, with info still to be added.