Robert Indiana kept a series of illustrated journals during the late 1950s and 1960s, in which he discusses the development of his work as well as his daily life on Coenties Slip.

In his journal entry for October 19, 1962, Indiana records that he was up at 8, and that after breakfast alone he started on the last coat of black of The Black Diamond American Dream #2, covering the whole field and masking off the circles. He writes that he finished it before a call from gallerist Allan Stone, who relayed that the American Federation of Arts had decided on Hardrock for Kenneth B. Sawyer's "Wit and Humor in American Art" show (Wit and Whimsy in Twentieth-Century Art, a traveling show that opened at the Tyler School of Fine Arts in Philadelphia). Indiana learned that the painting was unsigned, and told Stone he would come up immediately to sign it. He notes that he also had to trim the canvas and secure the staples, and that the painting had been in Stone's home for a long time. 

Indiana then records having lunch with Eleanor Ward, who showed him a little newspaper from Parisian gallerist Iris Clert, the Iris-Times, which had a story on artist Harold Stevenson on the back page. He notes that it was similar in size to the Sourdough Sentinel, the newspaper for the U.S. Air Force base at Fort Richardson, Anchorage, Alaska, which he had edited, and which made him think of doing something similar for Stable Gallery. He writes that Ward seemed interested in the idea, and that they began throwing some ideas together, coming up with a name for the new direction, "The New Real."