John Edwin Wigston is a transport artist who specialists in on the spot pencils sketches and life like water colour paintings. Although the majority of his subjects are trains he occasionally produces sketches of fairs and Showman's Engines, traction engines used to transport and power fairgrounds. This means he will prove a nice interval in my project as Pencil sketches are something I am more comfortable with and aren't learning from scratch. I'm fascinated by the way Wigston is able to capture so much feeling and life within his pieces when he uses so few and such basic mediums. He has an ability to put the viewer right in the scene in a way that a photograph just couldn't due to the way you can see his passion for art with the pieces. I am most impressed with how he can create so much light and shadow in a pencil piece while retaining all the little details and mechanics of the subject. Wigston's pieces are largely done as a commercial venture much like the fairground decorators so far analysed in the topic but they also have a historic importance as they are able to show us scenes from the past in higher detail than pictures from the time. The fact that most of Wigston's sketches are started on site in front of the vehicle often on a busy show ground or platform is also impressive.
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