Friday, November 14, 2014

Black and White Abstractions 1977


I've done graphic design for most of my life. Maybe all of my life, if you count drawings and lettering done by my baby self. When I lived in Cambridge and was a dismal graduate student, I frequented the "Science Fantasy Bookstore" in the Harvard Square area. It was there that I met my first science fiction fan friends, my first Pagan friends, and made my first art sale as a fantasy artist.

I did graphic work advertising the bookstore and many other things as well such as concert flyers or restaurant menus (remember Paco's Tacos!). This is a composite piece which combines my design for a leaflet advertising the Science Fantasy Bookstore, with a small black and white piece I entered at one of my first science fiction convention art shows. I was trying to render my geometric abstraction style in black and white. I'm not sure I really succeeded but it wasn't a bad attempt, especially in 1977. I just put these two pieces together. The bookstore ad is an excerpt, and below where I cut it is writing and maps and other lettering not done by me. All these straight lines were done with a ruler and the curves were traced against a plastic template. Yes, by hand. Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop didn't exist yet.

Composite of two separate ink illustrations from 1977, about  7 1/3" x 8 1/4". Click on the pic for more ink.

2 comments:

Tristan Alexander said...

Wow, so you have been doing your geometric style for a long time. I agree that this does not work quite as well in black and white as it does with color, but it is still good strong graphic design!

Robby Baby Dark Poet of Amour said...

This makes me think a bit of the book "Flatland: A romance of many dimensions" :) Nice mix of straight edges with circular shapes as well. This also makes me think of some of the other sci fi's I've read of alternate dimensions who's primary difference was the configuration of their dimensionality