BOB’S BIG BOY | Niki Butcher

Florida © 2008

Photographic Story How many of you remember Bob’s Big Boy? The restaurant has been around since 1936, but met it’s demise around the time we moved to Florida in 1980. I think the restaurant actually still exists, but has a different name. Clyde and I were in Orlando years ago when we walked by this Big Boy restaurant that was going out of business. The Big Boy use to be on the roof top, but was placed on the lawn. Perhaps someone had purchased it? Anyway, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it, but I didn’t have a camera with me so I asked Clyde to take one with his camera, so he did. He used an 8×10 view camera. In order to take the photo he had to get back away from the statue and that meant he was in the street. A policeman came and held the traffic for him! So nice! I finally found the time to hand paint the image, and so here it is. A photo from both Clyde & me 🙂 The Art of Hand Painting Black and White Photographs Photographed with a Sony digital camera and instead of oil painting with Q-tips and cotton balls, Niki was able to paint using Photoshop. Changing from the old-fashioned way of doing her art, to the new ‘fashion’ of using technology was challenging, but she’s enjoying getting back to her own personal expression. Archival Print Making Niki’s open edition gicleé artwork is printed on Sunset Bright Velvet Rag matte finish paper using eight archival inks. A state-of-the-art Epson Stylus Pro printer creates deep, rich dark values that hold subtle detail in the shadows as well as bright vivid colors that are truly tropical.