I’ve often thought that the famous statue of the WVU Mountaineer could have been placed in many other locations around Morgantown and wrote a previous story about the possibilities!
And perhaps that is why I was contacted by the editor of the WVU Farm Bureau to create a cover image for their June magazine. The editor had the idea that it would be great to place him in more rural West Virginia scene but felt that I would be able to make that idea a reality.
I already had an image in the right format for the magazine:
But unfortunately, this late autumn scene didn’t really fit in with a June edition. I did try a little Photoshop magic to convert the scene from the fall to the summer, but it didn’t really look that good to me, to be honest!
So, I obviously needed to start again! I had a photo of the view from the overlook in the Snake Hill wildlife management area that I thought would be a great place for him to “oversee”:
That fitted the brief of a summer scene and is also West Virginia countryside at its best, and so that old Photoshop magic came to the fore again to allow me to remove some of the trees and place the statue so that it looks as though he was standing on the rocky outcrop itself:
And here he is with the masthead of the Farm Bureau:
Finally, I couldn’t resist giving the image the oil painting treatment at the same time. Here is the image with an Impressionist painting style:
I certainly enjoyed the commission and had a lot of fun creating a good resting place for the statue. I hope it was a best seller for the WV Farm Bureau!
