Exoplanet

This planet picture is part of yet another 1986 astronomical series. I think it was originally meant to portray Jupiter, yet I titled it "Shepherdess and Moons," from the idea of "shepherd moons" orbiting large planets with lots of gravel and smaller moonlets around them. In those days the idea of stars around other planets was just speculation, though many astronomers knew they had to exist. The first detection of a true exoplanet (a planet orbiting another star than the Sun) was in 1995. I think this is an exoplanet.

I tried some non-airbrush texturing in this piece. After I laid down the basic colors with the airbrush, I went back over it with brushwork and semi-transparent layers of acrylic. Then I used a sponge and a paper towel with paint on it to add texture. I painted the planet and its moons and its gravel ring (seen edge-on here) last.

Autumn Improvisation

This is a vaguely Cubistic improvisational doodle from a notebook, colored in Photoshop. It's about autumn leaves and trees, and the original drawing is only about 3 inches square. Drawings like these allow me to try out ideas without having to mess around with acrylic paint or watercolor.

My temperamental iMac (I originally wrote iMad) is back in my studio, now working with the latest operating system, "Snow Leopard." I am now pursuing upgrades to Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Whatever I do, it's gonna cost me money. So far I have never made a cent from any digital artwork I've done, though I have earned some pennies doing a logo design.

Atlas: One More Try

Poor Eddie Willers, Ayn Rand's closest approximation of an "Everyman," tries one more time to convince boss James Taggart to take action. A waste of time indeed. The characters (and I) have spent 14 talky pages trying to save the Rio Norte Line of the mythical Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. By the way, no railroad that I have ever heard of is named for the people who create or run it. All railroads that I know of are named for the places they go, at least until Amtrak.

I have a few pages left to go in this opening scene, which is typical of the pace and thick dialogue of Rand's book. Even with editing for clarity and fitting into word balloons, a comic book adaptation of ATLAS SHRUGGED would be hundreds and hundreds of pages long. I plan to do one more scene following this one and then move on to other things, graphic novel projects that I have been doing slowly for many years. I may return to Rand for illustrations or graphic sequences in the future. I like doing sequential art (comic books, in popular terminology) more than any other type of art, except perhaps architectural art.

I can't imagine that in our big world no one has tried to do a sequential art version of ATLAS. Interestingly, according to Rand biographer Jennifer Burns, a graphic adaptation of Rand's FOUNTAINHEAD was created in the 1940s for serialization in newspapers. I would love to know whether it was still extant, it would be great to see it.

Chili Autumn at Mena's

For autumn and winter, Mena is adding chili to her menu at the snack shop. Come in and warm up with a bowl! I decorated the menu board for this season with lifelike leaves. It is already November, and it's chilly time.

"Bagels, Deli, and Donuts" shop is located in the Falls Plaza East shopping center in Falls Church, Virginia, on Route 7 across from Don Beyer Volvo.

The Red Nebula

Even though my overwrought iMac is still in the shop waiting to be retrieved, I can still do just about everything I need to do with my faithful iBook G4, now more than 3 years old and still good. Its name is "SoyMac" and she has been my studio machine now for quite a while. The artwork above is from a series I painted in October 1986. It's called "Filaments of Fire" and is a nebula perhaps radiating in the infra red or hydrogen-alpha radiation. There are also glowing areas which are protostars just being formed. It's acrylic on illustration board, 10" x 7". We wouldn't see these colors in space. All the bright nebulae and galaxy pictures published for our wonderment are color-enhanced. We need a glamorous universe.

Atlas Shrugged: James Taggart Rants

James Taggart unleashes a rant in this page of Ayn Rand Comics. It's a rant that I have heard quite often in "real life" from people I've grown up with. You can always blame your lack of success on the pressures of competition from other people in the field. No one gave you a chance...they all were pushy, obnoxious, untalented, culture-less hacks who thought they were something, and they put themselves forward like merchants, and they drowned out your own pure, refined, non-commercial high quality offerings.

Also note how Rand has her wormy villain character always introduce his statements with "It seems to me" or "I think," or "I'm not so sure...". In editing, these are sometimes called "weasel words," included in dialogue or article text in order to cover yourself against having to state a fact or an outright falsehood. Again, this is part of my own experience. When I was growing up, I was told to always add this sort of language to my own statements, because otherwise I would be making false assertions or "sweeping generalizations," or some other tactless utterance.

Colors of New England Fall

I had almost no time to do drawings when I was in Massachusetts. Social tasks took up all my time. But I did manage to do these two colored pencil sketches looking through the windows of my parents' house. Their property is overgrown with shrubs and tree seedlings and weeds. These plants are colorful in the fall, before everything turns brown and grey. The roof in the image above is from a shed which was my playhouse when I was young. It's now almost buried in vegetation. The image below depicts a catalpa tree sprout in front of a brilliant red euonymus shrub. I wish I could clean up my parents' landscaping, but I can't. And my father refuses to pay for any service, anything which costs any money. He is too weak to maintain it himself, so the old homestead has fallen into disrepair.