Arty Model 1975

Here's another highly composed model study from my mother's art group that met at the church in Newton, Massachusetts during the '70s. I attended when I was available and was not too involved in my college studies. From the looks of this piece I was more interested in depicting the environment and furniture than the model, whose pose was rather dull. I also tried to portray the pale winter sunlight as it fell on the figure.

Apart from this: Good luck, Tristan.

Ink and watercolor pencil on sketchbook page, 4" x 5 1/2", January 23, 1975. Click for larger view.

Clearing Out 2006

I'm still and ever trying to reduce the house clutter and packed materials in my closets. This pile is, as you can see, from 2006. During 2006, this stuff was interesting but 12 years later, in 2018 (Yikes, that late!) it isn't that enthralling, and will be respectfully discarded. Why did I keep the receipts for purchasing clothing and housewares? And I was busy spending bucks on art materials even more than I am now. In fact with all this digital stuff I spend much less on physical art materials, including paint. The two separate sketches you see above are of boxes soon to be removed, and packing materials, and my oriental rugs and big bookcase. There are other boxes to be gone through, too, including a large number of black and white photos of my family's stay in Europe in 1961-1962. I may submit these to professionals ("Legacybox" perhaps) and spend the money because I have had it with twisting myself painfully in front of the computer. I am hoping eventually I will be able to archive some of it, once it's all digitized. Well here's the Drawing of the Day, folks....are there any folks....?

Sepia tech pen on sketchbook page, 4 1/2" x 6 1/2", May 29, 2018.

Colorforms 7: Oracle in the Ruins

On a broad terrace up the mountain lie the ruins of the Oracle, lit by the full moon. Ancient cypress trees have taken root in the old stones. And there in the center, half hidden by the fallen blocks, is the sacred fire of truth and insight, built by the ones who have gone before. But watch and beware, because the truth is also a consuming flame surrounded by deadly vapors. A fantasy from the Mediterranean, still inspiring us today.

This game was played with the four basic shapes but in grayscale. One red triangle for the fire.

Photoshop, 5" x 5", May 29, 2018.

Darkovan Harvesters

There's a whole genre of paintings, spanning the ages, depicting idealized rural and farm scenes where happy peasants toil in clean, productive fields. They were especially popular in 19th century Europe where the Industrial Revolution's smoky furnaces and grinding mills made people long for the imaginary way it was before the smokestacks took over. I borrowed this Darkover scene from one of those paintings. A male and female peasant harvest native wheat grass, while in the background a cralmac, or perhaps a catman, one of the indigenous sentient species of the planet, helps the humans. The scene is tinted with the rays of the great Red Sun. Marion Zimmer Bradley didn't write a lot about peasants. She preferred to write about magic users, aristocrats, and fighters. You don't get as much audience writing about fieldworkers, unless they revolt.

Acrylic on heavy illustration board, 10" x 8", September 1989.

Stormqueen's Castle

I got "romantic" with this one. I imaged a Darkovan castle with storm clouds overhead, and all that's missing is the maiden (red-haired, of course) traipsing down a mountain passage in the foreground, wearing her nightgown and carrying a lighted lantern. Maybe she's too sensible to be wandering around outside with a storm coming in. Or maybe she caused the storm with her psychic powers. Darkover fandom is still alive, someone has asked me for vintage Darkover art to put on the cover of a collection of her stories set there, and this might be appropriate. I like the word "appropriate." It's been a while since I used it. I have lots of appropriate pictures with castles in them. 

"Stormqueen's Castle" is acrylic and ink on heavy illustration board, 16" x 12", March 1989.

More Clutterscapes

I thought I was making progress in clutter removal but in reality I've only moved stuff around. I must get rid of actual material goods  somehow. But now that I have the archive it is full of things which need to be inspected and somehow given away. There are still more photos to be transcribed and most frustrating many of them are in media which are too obsolete to be transcribed, like 16 millimeter miniature film images. May 25 and 26 I was retrieving a concert performance video made in 1991 and I am amazed that my old VHS video player still works. Tech from 1991 might as well be medieval calligraphy. I am not up to date on streaming internet cloud-based media but soon that will be the only way I can get the music I want. Meanwhile, fans of retro are not only collecting old vinyl but they are releasing new vinyl, I don't get that. Many of the media I am working with are badly deteriorated. Photoshop can only do so much. The images you see here are the video cassette of the concert, top image, and timeless garden pots and rocks, lower image.

Sepia tech pen on sketchbook page, 5" x 8", May 26, 2018.

Elf-like Darkover character

I guess I don't stink as much on character portraits as I thought, though I haven't done too many recently. This one is one of the alien-human, half-elf hybrids I illustrated during the height of my Darkovan drawing era. He isn't an actual character from a book or text, just a try-out of pen and marker technique. As you can see my markers were drying out and when this drawing was done, markers were much less sophisticated than the current ones I'm so thrilled with. If I find or re-discover some fantasy writing I still like, I might try some more character portraits after all these years.

Tech pen and markers, with color adaptation in Photoshop, 3" x 7", 1986.