Washington & Jefferson College

A rough, very free-hand, and quick sketch of Old Main on the picturesque campus of my alma mater, Washington and Jefferson College in Washington, PA drawn on my iPad Pro using an Apple Pencil in an app called Paper 53 and another called iColorama and based on a personal photo. Just below it is another digital painting done previously on my iPad in the Procreate app of the Washington Trust Building and surrounding cityscape, a view that repeatedly caught my eye whenever I’d sit on the hillside in front of Old Main as an undergraduate from 1974 to 1978. (See related post related to Jefferson College and Washington & Jefferson College.)

I drew Old Main on a visit to my hometown, Canonsburg, PA while sipping an 1802 Cream Ale on nitro at the Rusty Gold Brewing. I was sitting at the bar painting on my iPad, and the curious bartender asked me if I was carrying any prints on me for sale. I was; a little paper print of this image from this post. She bought it and put in on a shelf; see below. Awesome, eh?

Washington Trust Building done in Procreate (click on image to enlarge)

Check out their logo. Maybe this is why they selected one of my truck images.

John McMillan’s Log School, a frontier latin school established in the 1780s, once stood about a mile south of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1895 it was moved to its current location near the corner of Central Ave. and College St., in front of the former Canon McMillan Middle School, which is now being used in another creative, community manner. The Middle School used to be the Canon-McMillan Junior High School, when I was a student in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and when I did my student teaching at the 9th-grade level in Spanish in 1978. Before the Junior High School it was Canonsburg High School, before that it was Jefferson College, and before that, Canonsburg Academy. In 1865 Jefferson College merged with Washington College in Washington, PA to form Washington & Jefferson College, and because of the ties to Canonsburg Academy and Jefferson College, W&J can rightfully claim to have been established in 1781.

See a related post featuring digital paintings of Old Main on W&J’s campus and downtown Washington, PA, as seen from campus. Click here.

I indicated that I had done my student teaching at Canon-McMillan Junior High School, but what I didn’t mention was that, when I was in the 9th grade taking my first Spanish class, my teacher was Mr. James Podboy, a native of Canonsburg and a W&J graduate. I eventually attended W&J, studied Spanish language and literature, and my one and only Spanish professor was Dr. Antonio Moreno, who had been Jim Podboy’s Spanish professor as well. So, right there in the shadow of John McMillan’s log cabin on College St. in Canonsburg, PA, where Jefferson College once stood, Professor Moreno and Mr. James Podboy ushered me into the teaching profession as a W&J graduate in a pretty darn hometown sort of way.