I suggest a rendering with a wider context and more of the site. After group discussion, the decision is made to develop a concept that would encompass some of the property characteristics. The house was unusual for its time because it sat on the edge of a precipice with the front of the house facing the Rappahannock River; the site unusual with its Ferry Farm name. The expanded 'landscape' illustration will have more entourage and feeling for the site. With not enough time to collect the necessary hard copies of topographical information to build the perspective of this new illustration, I collect what I need online. Reading through much of George Washington Foundation's historical data on their website, I start to get a feel for the property, accurate details of the time period and the Washington family. A GIS map with site topographical lines of the area is found on the Stafford County web site. Google World is used to quickly study what might be the best viewpoint of the site. Work begins on roughing out the site topographical features, most notably the rapid drop to the river, the river and the deep ravine to the north of the site.

A spot across the river is located that gives the preferred angle. After constructing a rough pencil line perspective to mass out the sites main geographical features, I submit it to the team for input. This is the first 'layer' of information for the composition. We wonder where the ferry landing might have been in relation to the property, if it should be included and where. John Mesick gives valuable input on the overall tone of the landscape, what might be the best eyelevel and overall proportions of the composition I am building.

The two hand painted pieces are scanned at a very high resolution and combined in Photoshop, the team bounces around editing ideas to obtain the strongest and clearest image, which I implement digitally due to the time factor. The result is two images for use: the landscape with the house included and the house close up, both very high resolutions. The digital images are uploaded to my ftp web site folder and downloaded/printed in Virginia for the George Washington Foundation's board meeting.

Go ahead is received from the board and the final images are used for the July 2, 2008 press conference and have appeared in numerous newspaper, web sites and magazine articles around the world. Most notable are National Geographic, The Smithsonian Institution, The New York Times, The LA Times, Arab Times Online, NBC evening news and Science Daily.