Color Playground

In Photoshop you can do things with color that you shouldn't ever do with paint, like blend yellow with purple. Here's a cheerful, garish playground of shape and color, one of my "K-Series" quick abstract improvisations. If printed, it would be 10" x 7". 

Sharra the fire goddess of Darkover

In my ongoing media archaeology program, I am now scanning in slides of my very first professional work. I painted this image of "Sharra," the fire goddess of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, back in the fall of 1980. I did it because I had heard the author read from her upcoming book which featured this goddess, at the World Science Fiction Convention earlier that year. I thought that maybe the author would like it and recommend it for the cover of the book. The picture went to DarkoverCon (the annual Thanksgiving Day weekend convention) with a friend of mine, as that was one of the only two DarkoverCons I didn't attend. Sure enough, Bradley loved it and asked for it as the cover, and so it was. This turned out not to be so good politically for me, as the author usually has no influence over the choice of cover art. The publishers resented that the author had pushed the work of an unknown artist for the cover. But it was my first real commercial cover. 

The image was derived from a drawing by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the blue crystal is a Sandwich glass salt cellar which is still in my collection. The goddess is wearing handcuffs and chains because Fire is only good for human beings when it is controlled.

This photo was taken with a flash and so the face and center portion is bleached out. Acrylic on illustration board, 10" x 18".

The book was published in 1981, and the cover looked like this:

Enlil the great adept

Of all the characters I've made up (or encountered!?) in my imaginary world of the Noantri, the most memorable by far has been Enlil, the famous psionic adept (in their parlance, Theophore.). Enlil was a rebel against his aristocratic background, a wanderer, adventurer, and mystic, who ended up founding the modern Theophoric Institute at Surakosai. In his long life he did an astonishing variety of things. He was a professor of the dangerous subject of ancient history, and he was a movie player and actor. He was a diplomat and, when called upon, a wielder of devastating weapons of war. He had his hand in politics from one shore of the Middle Sea to another, but lived a reclusive life in a rustic garden. He was a devotee of an ancient religion that had been dead for twenty thousand years. And he was, until his disciple and successor changed the basis of theophorica from art to science, the greatest Theophore that has yet appeared on New Earth. He was also fascinated with volcanoes and geology, working with scientists to defend against the destructive forces of nature. Enlil, in his old age, very appropriately perished on the high edge of the crater of Mount Aitna, when a sudden volcanic blast vaporized him. 

He was famous for his bright orange aura, which glowed when he worked with high energies. In Trinacria (known to us as Sicily), where he had his homes, there are many memorials to him as well as a wide variety of souvenirs. Some people say they have seen him in dreams and visions, as if he were still alive in spirit.

Image is ink colored in Photoshop, derived from my upcoming "graphic essay" on modern architecture in Noantri World.

The Palace of Vision

I've always been fond of fantastic cities and architecture, so I never get tired of doing illustrations of them. This one presented me with some technical difficulties, as the board I painted it on was not absorbent and my paint just slid around on the surface. I was able to use that to my advantage to create interesting textures. This bit of "visionary" art uses Indian architectural models. Maybe it's a city in Heaven, or in one of the many layers of Gnostic imaginal reality. Ink and acrylic watercolor, 9" x 12", painted in March 1999. 

Undeveloped Site

The Noantri had been settled in the New World for more than 200 years when the Institute of Psionic Studies (known to them as the Theophoric Institute of Surakosai)

new campus was built. This is the undeveloped site for it, given to them by its owner as a donation. The land had been originally occupied after the Crossing by a primitive Noantri group given to low-tech feudal warfare. The site featured the remains of one of their castles. It was more than 150 years old, which by New Earth standards was quite old. In the Old Worlds, before the Crossing to New Earth, Noantri history went back more than 100,000 years, if any sort of Earth time measure could be applied to galactic history.

The blank block is for text which will appear in the final version of this graphic essay. Ink drawing, colored in Photoshop, about 5" x 4".

Deli Design

Here's the next in my Trader Joe's department sign series, created in carved foamboard mounted on Masonite. It's groovy and fab. Cruise into our parking lot in your new 1964 Ford Mustang, the first of its kind. Beatle music in the air, everywhere, yeah, yeah yeah!

Darkovan Falconer

You might remember Darkover, the world of the Red Sun. I painted countless pictures set in Marion Zimmer Bradley's colorful, primitive world. Some of them were portraits of real people. This fellow wished to have his portrait done to match the one I did of his fiancee. He posed for me in costume and I created him as a Darkovan nobleman with his hawk. Acrylic on illustration board, 9" x 12", July 1987.