Space Stations and Hardware

Here's another one of my attempts to do a space hardware book cover. But as before, no publisher bought this for any book. I struggled with this piece from the beginning. It's inspired by the work of Paul Alexander and Vincent DiFate, as were many of my space pictures from that era, but I just didn't have any excitement in the picture. The elements are too balanced. The operating words for book cover art then, as now, are "slick" and "solid." The art directors wanted something photographically real but fantastic. Now it's easy to do that with digital art but with acrylic you had to work with it. The only part that was painted with airbrush is the background. Also, I remember being frustrated that there was no easy way to draw big mechanical ellipses (larger than a few inches wide) to indicate a circular object in perspective. Again, nowadays all of that is done in seconds with digital design tools. This is another one of my "space hardware" pieces that will take its place in the obscurity from whence it came.

"Space Summit" (its original title) was painted in acrylic on illustration board, 13" x 22", January 1986.