Hair Door

I get my hair done every couple of months. I get a dye job and a cut. "Better living through chemistry" I say about hair dye. While I am waiting for the dye to take effect, I sit in the back of the salon and draw. Now I do this with the iPad. This is the door into the salon, plus a red tablecloth over a promotional display table, cars in the parking lot, and the main counter to the left. I would have done a lot more but I only had the time for the hair dye and then it was washoff and cut time. Now my hair is refreshed. I need more time to make more detailed and larger iPad sketches. This one was done on the "Art Studio" app, April 13, 2012.

Sacramento Street, Cambridge 1984

During most of the 1980s I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I lived what feels like a slow-paced, leisurely, dreamy existence from today's vantage point, although I know I went through plenty of turmoil. For many of those years I didn't even have a day job, as I pulled in numbers of modestly paying freelance jobs such as the game illustrations I've been showing here. I didn't have computers or the Internet to distract me, and I didn't even watch that much TV.

What I did, anywhere I could, was make sketches. In the spring and summer I could do this out on the sidewalk, anywhere I could park myself and my folding seat. I lived in a neighborhood full of interesting old architecture, so there were plenty of things to draw. This back alley, near Sacramento Street, was a couple of blocks away from my residence. I would draw the scene on site in black and brown inks with a Rapidograph pen. Then I would take it home and color it in with watercolor.

When I moved to the Washington area I was not able to do street sketching, at least not the way I did it in Cambridge. There are plenty of places in my town to draw, but if I sat out there I would be run over by a car or even told by residents or police to move on. Sketching venues are restricted to public places like Starbucks coffee houses, parking lots, or parks. And who has the time to sketch and watercolor anyway? I have to check my Facebook page, the online music chatroom, and my Yahoo mail, and do my blog.

Cambridge back alley sketch is ink and watercolor on sketchbook page, 4" x 6", July 25, 1984.

Spring Clouds

The clouds were beautiful today, as they often are this time of year. There were patches of dark rainclouds interspersed among pastures of vaporous creatures (the Floating Cats are back!) in blue skies. I did these drawings from memory, which is not as good as righteous Plein Air, but I did actually observe these skyscapes while I was outdoors. The top image is done with markers, and the bottom one is in colored pencils. The page is in my wine and landscape sketchbook, so I officially declare outdoor drawing season Open. Original image is about 7" x 9", April 11, 2012.

Intrigue on the North Bank

The next cover I did for Gamelords was this colorful scene of a street fight between two clans. Imagine the Verona of "Romeo and Juliet" with all its plots, romance, and violence and this is the scene of the game, which was called "Intrigue on the North Bank." You could play doomed lovers, street bravos, scheming elders, or other stock Renaissance characters. Unfortunately, no one ever got to intrigue on the North Bank because the game, and my illustrations for cover and interiors, never got published.

"Intrigue" cover is ink and acrylic, 11" x 14", Spring 1983. Klik for larger view.

Corwin of Amber Tarot Card

I may have already shown these cards on this Blog but this is a newly renovated version of one of my Amber Tarot cards, freshly restored from the old slide. Roger Zelazny's "Amber" series features multiple universes, swashbuckling action, hard-boiled characters, and psychedelic visions. The plot is about a widespread royal family who can travel between dimensions and who are all fighting each other to take charge of the royal homestead, the original Reality of the world. Corwin is the hero of the story. This series was very popular in the late 1970s and I liked it too. In the story, each character has a magical Tarot card set by which they can communicate and even teleport to the location of another card in the set.

My fantasy/science fiction friends urged me to make a set of these cards, and so I did. The 17-card set went to Suncon, the 1977 Worldcon in Miami, Florida, where it was sold as a set to some folks from Kansas City. It resurfaced a couple of years ago when the owners tried to sell it, and offered it back to me for much more than I could afford.

I would love to have really good scans or hi-resolution photos of the set but that is unlikely to happen as they are all in frames. My old slides are not very good and have faded with age but if there is any interest I will re-scan the slides and restore the images with Photoshop to the best of my ability.

This figure is Corwin, whose heraldic colors were black and silver. I used Renaissance finery from the parade illustrations of Albrecht Durer for the costume design. Corwin's Tarot card is the Page (or Jack) of Swords. I did these cards when I was still a graduate student in Greek and Latin classics. The more art I did, the less I was interested in academics. This soon led to my abandonment of academia and the prestige and good living it conveys.

"Corwin of Amber" Tarot trump is ink and watercolor on Fabriano paper, 4" x 7", summer 1977.

In Memoriam Thomas Kinkade

I somehow expected the so-called "Painter of Light" to last forever, to be painting something into his nineties. Maybe he would have cast aside the popular style that made him so much money and gone into some more "fine arts" or "serious" type of work. At one point, Thomas Kinkade did show some "plein air" paintings done outdoors. You never know, he might have gone on to do abstractions or book illustrations or even church paintings. But it won't happen, since he's gone so soon.

I've always been a Kinkade fan. Back in the 80s, I went to a talk by James Gurney at the 1984 Worldcon in Anaheim, California. At the talk he presented a book that he had done with the then-unknown Kinkade, called "The Artist's Guide to Sketching." I bought a copy of this book which is now a valuable rarity. It inspired me to make countless sketches wherever I go, now on iPad as well as paper. I never knew then that Kinkade would become the American corporation that he was. In fact when I saw the first popular pictures by Kinkade I was surprised to recognize Gurney's collaborator as the artist.

I refer to April as "Kinkade month" because on some days this month, the world really does look like a Kinkade picture. The flowers are out everywhere, wildly colorful with azaleas and tulips and white dogwoods and redbud trees. The grass is an unnaturally brilliant shade of emerald green and the sky is either misty pink or glassy pure blue as it has been here these recent weeks. Arty types complain about Kinkade making ultrasweet, deceptive fantasy landscapes, but if you go to the right place here in Virginia at the right time of day in April, you will see real Kinkade scenes, complete with flowers and cottages and perhaps an old wagon and a stream. (The winery is next door.)

I prefer fantasy to reality. I am comforted by the imaginary world that Kinkade made up, of cabins in the woods or cozy villages where everyone helps their neighbor, where summer afternoons stretch on in warm silence or snow falls on pure winter nights. I have wanted to create that kind of nostalgic fantasy art myself, but I'm too busy learning to depict dragons.

This image is my homage to Kinkade. It is adapted from a real wrought-iron decorative gateway and garden in front of an urban cottage near my workplace. Maybe Kinkade is now in a Heaven that looks like one of his paintings.

Photoshop, original 7" x 10", April 8-9, 2012.

The Naked Sword

Despite its suggestive title, the game for this cover was supposed to be a traditional medieval fantasy battle player. I was instructed to put a female warrior in reasonable, non-bikini armor in a prominent place. This was probably because one of the writers, the one who was giving me directions, was a woman. Nevertheless, our female warrior isn't wearing a helmet (and neither is her male co-fighter) so it may be that the Orcs they are battling would make short work of them. Or maybe not, because the humans are the heroes. This game, unfortunately, never got published, so my cover disappeared into the fannish black hole, except for my retrieved color slides here.

"The Naked Sword" cover is (was) acrylic on Strathmore illustration board, 11" x 14", November 1983.