d372 ACE 3000 Part 2

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Part 2 of 2 for the ACE 3000 saga.

d371 ACE 3000 Part 1

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One of the themes of my art has always been the juxtaposition and combination of ancient and advanced technology. As long as I can remember, I’ve had space trains and space ships. Those outrageous shenanigans continue into the present, but I am just as fond of more subtle shenanigans like art-deco space or steam intermodal.

As such, I’m a big fan of modern steam, or attempts to modernize steam, and that’s where I’ve gone with my more recent Lego train models such as the 5AT, SR Leader, and even to some extent the venerable FF7 Locomotive. Today’s MoC is a continuation of this “series”; the American Coal Enterprises (ACE) 3000 is an advanced steam locomotive concept that gained some traction in the late seventies and early eighties during the oil crisis and lost it all when gas prices came back down.

The ACE has been kinda-sorta done for a while. You can see the beta version in this USS Melvin pic from March.

d365 Rita and Estelle 2013

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Well, I lied. I said there’d be another Lego post this time, but the hoverbarge I was building kind of got stuck, and it isn’t done yet.

For a lot of paintings I often have something in mind some time before execution, but this one kind of rushed its way into my queue. This is actual the fourth in what is now a fairly long string of Rita and Estelle paintings (the first one being 2008, most of which have unfortunately been rubbish. 2013 deviates from the “paint-heavy” direction I was going with Rita 2013 and Estelle 2013, and takes another stab at “hybrid cell-shading”.