Over the summer the boys and I spent time "off screens" each morning from breakfast to lunch. I accomplished a great deal, including some fun tasks I had been postponing. One such joy was working a puzzle I had purchased at Disneyland a few years back. Here is an image of the completed puzzle:
Pay attention to the colors used; sky blue, various reds and browns and other southwestern U.S. earth tones. These are the predominant background colors. What interests me are the bold accent colors; red, gold and green. (Again, my apologies if you just picked up a different 80's song on the brain). Two greens are used - a lighter bright green on the banner behind the BIG THUNDER MOUNTAIN RAILROAD lettering, and a darker, forest green on both the locomotive cab and the Disneyland plaque at the bottom of the frame.
There's also a little green on the sparse foliage, but there's one other place that dark forest green is used. Here, take a closer look and see if you can spot it:
This is a BIG high-quality image, so right-click and open it in a new tab or window if you need to. When you work a puzzle, you notice things you might not have in a casual glance at an image. I tune my eye to a certain color and gather pieces with that color, knowing that they'll likely fit together somehow in a group. I knew the Disneyland emblem and locomotive cab were the same color and the shapes of each were different enough I could easily separate them into groups. But the girl...
Now we can return to that initial question, "Who's that girl?" I believe that she is someone important, probably to the artist who created this poster. Maybe a wife or daughter or girlfriend, or even the artist herself. Why do I believe this? A few reasons. First, the aforementioned color. She's wearing the same color as the two other powerful and important elements in the piece - the locomotive and the park emblem. All the other guests on the train are wearing shades of red or brown and even sky blue - all background colors.
Secondly, she's positioned just above the EXACT center of the image:
I added the white lines in Gimp to a borrowed image of the attraction poster to illustrate this. You can also follow the sight lines of the track coming from the lower right quadrant towards the center through the locomotive and they point directly at her. In an image full of off-axis and frame-busting elements, she is one of the most "forward", just behind the locomotive and track.
Finally, she is the ONLY person in the image looking directly at the viewer. Everyone else is seated in their ride vehicles facing the direction of travel while her shoulders and face are turned toward the viewer and her eyes are looking at you.
While she may be someone important, she is not the focus of the poster overall. Even on the full-sized poster at Disneyland park, she's only a couple inches high at most. She, along with all the other guests on the train, are dwarfed by the imposing typeface and font size of the lettering. The ominous clouds, towering peak and rushing locomotive all spell out the attraction's name - Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. And where do you find it? Why, Frontierland, of course. Even the planks on which you are encouraged to "climb aboard 'n hang on" are larger.
But as I mentioned earlier, working a puzzle affords the opportunity to observe the distinct elements of an image and study the artistry behind the work. Big Thunder is one of my favorite attractions at Disneyland and I love working puzzles, so this was all joy to work this one. I rarely return to a puzzle after working it, but I may have to on this one in order to get it mounted and framed...or maybe I'll just work it again, and perhaps I'll notice something...or someone...else next time.
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