HW due Fri

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/arts/design/31pain.html?_r=1&ref=design



This article fits the Wall Street Journal formula because it opens with a specific person and continues to broaden. The story has a nut graph in the third paragraph. The story also has a circle ending. Towards the end the woman, Mimi Torchia Boothby, is reintroduced and her story comes to a close.



opening: Mimi Torchia Boothby’s job as a technician puts her outside a wind tunnel every weekday at the Boeing plant south of Seattle, but in her free time two years ago she took up watercolors. Among her favorite subjects are cats, idyllic scenes of Italy — and, of course, Barack Obama, whose contemplative, sun-splashed portrait she completed a few weeks after his election as president.



nut graph: Perhaps not since John F. Kennedy, whose dusty portraits can still be seen in kitchens and barbershops and alongside the antique beer cans at bars like Manuel’s Tavern in Atlanta, has a presidency so fanned the flames of painterly ardor among hobbyist and professional artists.



circle ending: Ms. Boothby said she is now managing to make a little money on the side with her brushes and easel and credits Mr. Obama. “I think that portrait I did of the president was kind of a touchstone for my confidence, painting-wise,” she wrote in an e-mail message. “I’m not sure I would have been able to start doing commissions if I hadn’t gotten as warm a reception as I did for that one painting.”