My new Buffalo coloring challenge

I love coloring books and the other day I came up with my first coloring page. And I dared to start a coloring challenge!

Everyone is sitting around because of the coronavirus and is in need of fun and games. So I found this drawing I did of Lance Diamond Way. Lance Diamond Way is on Elmwood Avenue at the corner of West Utica. Lance used to sing at the Elmwood Lounge there. The Elmwood Lounge is now called Milkie's after its current and legendary owner Mike Milkie. That was where I drew this picture, looking out across the street.

That was a beautiful afternoon. My friend Meghan was with me and Mike Milkie sat down with us and reminisced about Lance and other things. I drank a beer. It is all too rare that life slows down like that and you have time to chill.

However later that day I never bothered looking back at my sketchbook. I thought: I would never have chosen that view and I will never have use for what I drew. The angle was tough, I thought. Plus I was talking while I was drawing and that does not always work out.

However. Oddly enough over the next few weeks that picture became one of my favorites. I kept finding myself going back to it. And when I decided to try doing up a coloring page, I immediately went for this picture.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone!

I had to re-draw it by hand because the original had shadows and such. I will have to post it so you see what I mean. It is a huge contrast! But otherwise I made no changes. The truck, the workers unloading the truck, the car across the street, everything was as I had originally drawn it. I love that in a sketch. I love to look at it and say: That is what I saw.

My drawing is on Facebook, on the page Mary Kunz Goldman Sketches, in case anyone wants to download it and try it.

Meanwhile above -- at the top of this post -- is an interpretation in Crayolas by Ryan Lysarz .... and here is one by my sister Margaret Mills. Ryan and I have been marveling at how for some reason they shared something of the same color scheme.

Our friend the author and poet Anne Apfel also used colors in that family.

She intended it to depict shadows falling at twilight. Some friends on Facebook said it reminded them of Ludwig Bemelman's "Madeline" books. Now I have such a big ego!

It is fascinating to me, all the different directions a picture can take depending on who is coloring it. I knew this was going to be fun, but not this much fun.

The things people come up with, I cannot get over it! I will have to post more tomorrow because I do not want to let everything out of the bag all at once. Because everyone is having fun with it we are going to add a new picture every week.

I am thinking next summer when this virus thing is past, we can have a show.

We can sip white wine and look at everyone's creations and celebrate what we have wrought!