"Knives" title page

This is another one of my title pages for a story by Marion Zimmer Bradley. This part of Darkover looks like an Italian hill town, some of my favorite world architecture. Italian settings are fitting for the operatic melodrama of Bradley's writing. The story was about a young woman who runs away to become a member of the "Free Amazons," a feminist medieval guild and sisterhood. They are forbidden to carry swords and this is a gun-free civilization, so they carry long knives instead.

This piece is not well preserved; the white streaks are due to reflections off the shiny warped plastic in the portfolio book in which this art copy is unremovably entombed.

Original is black ink on illustration board, about 8" x 10", January 1983.

Stasheff's Ragpicker

I finally got back to doing my illustrations for the Stasheff "Warlock" series. This guy is a character from the most recent one I did, "Warlock and Son." The troubled son of Warlock Gallowglass, Magnus, wants to get away from his boring small town and lack of friends, and see the world. Soon after hapless Magnus sets off on his journey, he is confronted by a quirky, shabby figure who is described as Victorian rather than medieval. He is a Ragpicker with a bindlestiff (my favorite word in English) full of discarded cloth, but he also offers magical charms including a form of insurance against heartbreak. Magnus refuses the offer, sending the elf-like character away, but there will be other chances. Here he is offering the charm to anyone who wants it, but of course there will be a price for it. 

Photoshop on Cintiq digital inking, 6" x 8 1/2", January 13, 2017.

Gaming Clutter

I did a lot of gaming art in the early days of role-playing games, where the sourcebooks were simple black and white magazines and the equipment was dice, paper, and pencils. Not like the technocratic games of today where you need to invest hundreds of dollars on computer gear to play. I got commissions to illustrate entire games, like this one. It was called THE EVIL RUINS and took place in a haunted ruined castle. The writers crammed their game progress with all sorts of objects and environments which you would encounter and figure out how to treat them. "You enter a very dusty room with a mounted set of armor on a pedestal...the shield from the monument has the arms of the old dead King...the dwarf in your party hears something in the corridor.....etc." The characters were selected from the usual array of Tolkien races. Here is one of the most cluttered environments from the game.

Black ink on illustration board, 11" x 7", fall 1983. Click on the picture for a larger view.

Femme Fatale of Amber

From my stash of 1980s fan art comes this interior illustration, part of a suite commissioned and published by a fan magazine called "Shadow Shiftin'." The zine was devoted to the world and characters of Roger Zelazny's "Amber." "Shadows" were alternative universes where the characters were sort of the same but lived different lives, and the physical world worked differently. In this fan-written story, a middle-aged, middle-class American guy is somehow translated between universes and ends up at the royal court of the perpetually scheming and fighting Amber family. The visiting Earthman is being approached by one of the sneaky dangerous princesses, and he is at the same time realizing that he really is in a castle in the clouds, where "down" is miles, or even universes, away.

Ink on illustration board, 4 1/2" x 10", spring 1983.

Geometrika Red

These little "geometrika" are ridiculously easy to draw and color in. Even a kid could do it - I think I taught my neighbor's 7-year-old son to do them. I remember doing this as a workshop at a science fiction convention, too. When people say to me that "I couldn't draw a straight line with a ruler, I have no art talent," I say "C'mon, let's do this." And I hand them some paper, a pencil, and some plastic graphics shape templates like circles and squares and ovals. "Can you trace this? Can you put this shape on top of this other shape?" Most people can do this, given that they are physically capable of it. Then I say, "Here's some colored pencils. Now you color this in. Yeah, just like all those adult comic books you see in the stores." Usually they can do this, too. So when they're done, and they've made a pretty geometric abstraction, I say, "Congratulations. You just did art." I did this one in digital medium but it's the same if I used pencils or paint on paper.

Now I feel the same way about computer programming and engineering. I say to an engineer/IT person, "I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag. It's all around me but I know nothing about it." Is there an analogy to my process with non-artists, for computer coding or software design or hardware engineering? So far, my attempts to emulate this have been futile. I know people who can design and build a complete electronic music synthesizer with a mini computer the size of your hand. All I can do is color stuff in. 

This Geometrika is originally ink on sketchbook page, colored in Photoshop, about 3 1/2" x 3", January 2017.

Bisexual Flirtation of Darkover

Back on Darkover, Robert Kadarin continues his adventures. He meets a young boy, named "Valentine," and takes a liking to him. After all, as a mostly-alien that mates with both sexes, anyone young and pretty is fair game to him. The youth even has the same tall, thin figure, suggesting a similar "mixed" ancestry. What Kadarin doesn't know (even though he is supposed to have telepathic powers) is that the boy "Valentine" is really a girl in disguise named "Thyra." This is covered in some of Bradley's material and the fan author continues it. In the end, her gender is revealed and Kadarin falls in love with her as a heterosexual, which ultimately leads to them getting married. Ain't fantasy fiction great!

Black ink on illustration board, 6 1/2" x 9 1/2", 1983.

Fruit Press at Hardscrabble Vineyard

This "farmpunk" device is an antique fruit press, which I photographed at Linden's "Hardscrabble Vineyards." It can squish apples and I suppose grapes too. The fruit goes into the hopper above, you turn the crank, and the fruit is smashed and the juice comes out into the barrels, which are then emptied into the fermentation vats. Have you tasted apple wine? It's delicious, although sweeter than the usual grape wine. It has a golden clear color and is not like cider at all. It's winter now so wining is difficult due to weather but I will try to visit at least once this month. 

Brown sepia tech pen ink on sketchbook page, about 6" x 6", rendered from a photograph, January 8, 2017.