Sketch of the Week: Windmills on 285

Route 285 is a road I've driven many times to get to Santa Fe and Albuquerque, and like many places in the Southwest it is dotted with the water windmills that have become an iconic feature of the American West. More recently, however, modern energy windmills have been appearing in the landscape, their blades slowly turning at varying tempos and vaguely reminding me of giant birds. During one of my drives back from Albuquerque I saw these giant mills with an older watermill in front of them. The juxtaposition between two technologies that run on the same power concept intrigued me, so I drew the scene when I got home.

I could see Peter Hurd drawing something like this if he were alive today. His work took inspiration from the west that he knew and experienced, so if he had seen these on one of his drives he probably would have at least sketched them.