Domestic Geometry

I made this drawing at a friend's house, because I will draw anything I see. The structures of stairs, walls, and shelves intrigued me as a form of three-dimensional domestic geometry. The books on the floor are sub-sets of this geometry. When you put books on the floor, (no, of course you don't have any books on your floor) the rectangular slabs form their own perspective, unless you are obsessive enough to line up your books with the parallel lines of the floorboards or tiles. If the books have designs on the covers, then these designs or images follow yet another subset of a subset in the geometric hierarchy. The same would be true of pictures hanging on the wall. See, it all makes sense now.

Brown Pitt technical pen ink on sketchbook page, 5" x 7", September 27, 2014.

Aurora Exomoon

It's a Photoshop doodle inspired by the incredible pictures of Saturn and its moons sent back by the Cassini space probe. Since there are exoplanets, there are probably ones that look just like Saturn but have twisted aurora bands instead of rings. And they would have exomoons made from rock and ice and liquid which look like the crunchy moons of Saturn that the space probe revealed. I call that "exo-lent." In the endless variety of our universe, anything planetary can happen.

Photoshop, 7" x 3 1/2", September 29, 2014.

The Man in the High Castle

Four years ago I posted on this Blog a series of black and white illustrations for books by Philip K. Dick. I did them as frontispieces for a collector's item edition of PKD's books. Somehow, I neglected to post this one, which was done for Dick's "The Man in the High Castle." I probably didn't post it because of the disturbing references to Nazis and the little picture of Hitler at the top left.

"The Man in the High Castle" takes place in an alternative history where the Nazis and Japanese won World War II. San Francisco is dominated by the Japanese military. I did quite a lot of research for this illustration, such as the antique pistol that the Japanese collector wanted in the story, the elderly jewelry dealer, and the martial-arts woman at the top. The image of Hitler is a piece of clip art. Since Dick used the chance-based oracle "I Ching" as inspiration for the plot of the book, I looked up the hexagrams that he used and lined them up to the right. To the upper left are drawings of famous old houses on a hill in San Francisco. The book on the table is an alternate story in an alternate world, where the Americans and Allies won World War II. The whole image is arranged in a vertical rectangle with arched cut-off corners, imitating a Japanese print.

Original art is black ink on illustration board, 7" x 10", summer 1979.

Porcu-plat

Here's a critter from my current sketchbook. The "Porcu-plat" has features of a porcupine and a platypus. His sharp porky quills protect him and he can use his tail to throw quill darts at enemies. He digs for his food, usually grubs and insects, in the ground with sturdy little feet and then he pokes in the dirt with his large birdlike beak. He is not very big, but nobody in the forest bothers him.

"Porcu-plat" is ink on sketchbook page, about 3" x 3", September 27, 2014.

Eddings Horse Lord

David Eddings covered as many stock characters as he could in his "Belgariad." This one, "Hettar the Horse Lord," fills the plot slot of the "Noble Horse Clansman." These are faux-Mongols who spend most of their time on horseback and fight fiercely for the hero's cause. The late fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones, in her brilliant and hilarious encyclopedia of fantasy cliche's "The Tough Guide to Fantasyland," calls them "Anglo-Saxon Cossacks." The Horse Lords are also described in the online guide to fantasy cliche's, "TV Tropes." I am not really trying to make fun of fantasy literature here because it is impossible not to use cliche's in your fantasy writing. You just have to pick the ones which sound plausible and likable and avoid racial stereotyping, something which Eddings may not have entirely achieved. 

I drew as many of his characters as I could and then ran out of gas (or horse feed). There were plenty more I could have done but somehow I just didn't want to continue. Eddings (and his wife Leigh) wrote lots more books in the Belgariad series all of them full of illustratable stock characters. I'm not sure anyone remembers them. I took notes which sit gathering dust next to the lined-up series of tales. Dust is everywhere. Now I have digital dust as well. 

"Hettar the Horse Lord" is (was) colored pencil and markers on illustration (Bristol) board, 7" x 10", December 1992.

Eddings Characters

Here are more character portraits from David Eddings' "Belgariad." I borrowed the faces from real people in film stills or photos gathered in magazines. (In the olden days before Google Image Search, Flickr, and the endless Interweb, I used to gather my reference images from these printed paper sheafs.) These three characters are the young hero Garion, his Grandfather-wizard Belgarath, and his Aunt-sorceress Polgara. The Grandfather is taken from Alec Guinness as Gulley Jimson in the film THE HORSE'S MOUTH; the boy is taken from a youthful German ballet dancer. The background is inspired by those of Maxfield Parrish. Garion is holding a royal magic sword, which is topped by the "Orb," the main talisman of the story, because every magic story about a young person with a Special Destiny has to have at least one of these glowing stone talisman thingies.

Acrylic on illustration board, 12" x 16", July 1984. Click for larger view.

Girl and Dragon

This is an older attempt of mine to do the "warrior babe" theme. I added a dragonish-iguana as a friend to the girl. The original title was "The Allies," as I haven't seen too many dragon-and-babe combinations where she isn't riding the dragon but doing action alongside it. This was just an experiment and there isn't enough boob showing, you have to twist your girl model into a position where you can clearly see her chest as well as the arm and hand with the sword. And the creature can't look cute the way it does here, it has to look fierce. I regard this as a challenge, I would do pictures like this just to prove that I could, but I have never been successful at it. Other artists, especially professional comic book artists, can knock one of these off in 15 minutes, perfectly drawn and exaggerated figure and all. 

"The Allies" is mixed media and colored pencil on some sort of paper, 7" x 10", winter 1993.

Summer's End

Back in 1998 - that's 16 years ago, folks - I filled my journal-book with "reality drawings" in ink and colored pencil. Nowadays I save that style for my winery and landscape drawings and I fill my journal with doodles or experiments using markers. In 1998 I didn't have my huge library of markers to work with. What you see here, under that date in September, is a view of some corners of the swimming pool in back of my apartment building. It has been decommissioned and partly drained, and leaves are starting to cover the water's surface. Other than the water level, the scene is nearly identical now. The pool keepers have drained most of the water, leaving a puddle which will soon be completely covered with autumn leaves. It wasn't much of a summer anyway. The pool was only open for two months since there were so many snow days for the schoolchildren to make up, the pool being open only when there was no school. I don't mind, since I don't swim in the pool and the splashers in the pool made a lot of screaming noise which I heard when I was home. Not much of a summer, only a handful of thunderstorms. I'd migrate to a place which has perpetual summer, except for one major thing: without winter, grapevines don't grow or thrive. 

Ink and colored pencil on sketchbook page, 5 1/2" x 4", September 12, 1998.

African Violet

The science fiction, gaming, and costuming world is not immune from the problems of the "real" world, including race and color. Historically, the fan world has been overwhelmingly white and male, and though it is slowly becoming more "diverse," the imbalance is still there. In my participation in the costuming community, it was rare to see Black costumers. But I do have one long-time African American friend in that community and it was for her, at her suggestion, that I came up with this costume concept. The "African Violet" flower, familiar in indoor gardens and nearly extinct in the wild, was the inspiration for this ball gown. The body and skirt of the gown are made from soft, quilted "leaves" covered in a velvety fabric. The sash across the chest is made from purple silk flowers. The original idea is from cultivated Nature and has nothing to do with ethnic African designs.

Ink and watercolor on illustration board, 7" x 10", February 1991.

Delaplane Cellars at Autumn Equinox

Autumn's here, without any much of a summer, a "stealth" summer that hardly rained on us at all. Many of the grapes, especially the dark purple ones like the Cabernets, are still on the vines, warm in the sun at  Delaplane Cellars in Markham, Virginia. My friends and I visited Delaplane for some sipping and sunlight, and photography and art, on September 20, right at the Equinox. The grape harvest will happen this week and the cycle of fermentation and craft begins again. 

Ink and colored pencils on sketchbook page, September 20, 2014. Some Photoshop coloring added in window sketch.

Belgarath, from Eddings

The "Elderly Wizard Mentor" character in David Eddings' "Belgariad" is "Belgarath," a millennia-old magic user who is also known as "Mister Wolf." The text suggests that he can turn into a wolf. That's why I've put the stylized purple "wolf" head and tail aura behind the character. I don't know what it is about wolves, but the wolf species is hugely popular in fantasy fiction. Not just werewolves, but men and women who have telepathic wolf companions or who run in packs with the wolves. There are wolven warriors in the "Warhammer 40,000" universe who are hybrids of wolf and enhanced human. And the white Arctic wolf has its own fantasy following, including the identification of albino Elric as the "White Wolf."

Back in the early days of storytelling, wolves were Big and Bad and they were enemies of humanity and civilization. You wanted to keep the wolf from your door. But in 20th century fantasy, wolves were rehabilitated into furry heroes. This is probably because no one in modern urban society worries about their livestock (and livelihood) being destroyed by marauding wolves. Many animals who were harmful in the past, such as lions and tigers and bears, are now fantasy darlings.

"Belgarath" is acrylic on illustration board, 5" x 9", May 1987.

More Ruins

Here's another sketch inspired by the photographs of Nadav Kander. I'm not including a link to Kander's website. If you go there, you will see his photographs in glorious wide-screen high def, but in doing so his site will EAT YOUR BROWSER. The Kander site takes command of all your windows and re-sizes them and you can't escape. At least this is what happened to me. Not as bad as the Russian police arresting you for trespassing, but it took me long minutes just to figure out how to exit the website. So I'll just keep drawing my own images of ruins and getting surrealistic. There's a long tradition of picturesque or gloomy ruin painting which I love, so there's a lot more I'd like to depict. And I won't have to breathe radioactive dust in the nuclear desert.

Markers and Photoshop on sketchbook page, 7 1/2" x 4", September 18, 2014.

The Dead City of Prolgu

Remember David Eddings? No? Well, earlier this year I posted a bunch of illustrations I made from the cliche-ridden but entertaining books of this now-deceased American fantasy author. Here's a few more. This one, based on Egyptian ruins, shows the entrance to the "Dead City of Prolgu," where the group of stock characters takes refuge as a blizzard approaches. Despite its small size this is one of my favorites of my Eddings illustrations.

"The Dead City of Prolgu" is watercolor and ink on illustration board, 6" x 9", June 1991.

Electrical Ruins

Rather than faded old pieces from decades ago here is some freshly done Photoshop sketch by-product. I'm inspired here by the photographs of Israeli photographer Nadav Kander, who risked his life to depict abandoned Soviet nuclear test sites and secret military colonies in Kazakhstan. I'm fascinated by these abandoned empty places that are still full of radioactivity and menace. I am glad that someone is daring (or crazy) enough to document these hidden sites, like volcano photographers who go up to the rim of the lava lake, so we image-consuming folk can see what's there while someone else takes the risk. This way, surrealism is realism.

Photoshop, 10" x 7", September 16, 2014.

Hollywood Babylon King and Queen

In those days, the days of CostumeCon 1991, I knew a handsome couple whom I really wanted to design for. You see, when I see someone naked or just really good-looking, my first impulse is that I want to DRESS them, and then DRAW them. Artists are funny that way, just ask one if you know one. The problem with my friends here was that they were not costumers and would never wear anything like what I designed. I designed for them anyway just for the sake of showing it around at CostumeCon and then I gave the art to the folks who inspired it, since they didn't attend the convention.

I gave them pseudo-Babylonian outfits with a hint of Deco, just like those wonderful films of the early 20th century that lavished detail of ancient Assyria or Babylon gone by on both sets and costumes. All of the glamour and glitz was loosely wrapped around some moral lesson but was really just pure fun and entertainment. They don't make 'em like this any more. But I can design 'em. "Ardath" is a mythical Babylon-ish city of splendor and corruption imagined by one of my favorite fantasy authors, Marie Corelli, 1860-1925, who wrote Steampunk when it really existed. "Ardath" was published in 1889 and I have done many costume studies for that Hollywood Babylon world.

Two costume studies are ink and watercolor on illustration board, each 6" x 9", February 1991.

Morning Glory Cape

In 1991 I did a series of costume concepts for "CostumeCon," a gathering for costume lovers that is occasionally held near enough for me to go to it easily. I love designing costumes for all types of character including art-nouveau-ish outfits based on flowers. The "Heavenly Blue" morning glory is one of my favorite flowers so I designed a cape in the colors of the flower which could go over a white Victorian gown. The blue predominates but there are white rays through it and at the neckline which would be the center of the flower is a touch of gold evoking the flower's yellow center. There would be quite a lot of fabric in this cape because its pattern if laid out flat would be almost circular, like the morning glory. That shade of blue is hard to find in real fabric and the "Morning Glory Cape" was never built.

Watercolor and ink on illustration board, 7" x 10", February 1991.

Owls

As you may know, I've been slammed by a severe cold and probably bronchitis resulting from that, so I haven't been able to go to work or do any art. All I do is cough. But I can draw a little bit in my sketchbook journal, and the theme of this page is "owls." I am a bird lover and owls are some of my favorite birds, mainly because they are up at night the way I am, and no one ever blames them for sleeping all day long. There is a family of Barred Owls in my backyard, and during the breeding season I can hear their calls in the night. The owl portrait head at the top is a "Saw-whet" owl, a tiny little owl which doesn't come into my area very often.

The Barred Owl looks like this: 

And they have a fascinating repertoire of noises and calls. Not just the "Who cooks for youuu" characteristic call, but squeals, whines, screams, whoops, and my favorite, the caterwaul. The Barred is the only owl I have ever seen in my neighborhood with my own eyes, though I've heard them all along. During a snowstorm last winter, someone was shoveling snow under a tree and disturbed a roosting Barred Owl by daylight. What a bother for the bird! I saw it fly away from the shoveler and find a perch higher up on another tree. After a while it settled in and closed its eyes until nightfall. 

                                                                          

                                                                

Last on the Owl Page is this red-phase Screech Owl, another owl I've heard but never seen. This one has the cute little feather "ears" that make it so characteristic. 

That's all for the bird world tonight. I thank "Birds and Blooms" magazine for the owl photos, which were my drawing references. Pitt brown and black technical pen on sketchbook page, color and some touch-ups added in Photoshop.

Tower of Light

This one's from the same experimental, pretty batch as the Cloud Castle a few posts ago. The magical tower, built from crystallized light, rises into the clouds as dragons swoop around it to protect it. I'm very fond of that shade of deep sky blue so I mixed up a lot of it, leading to a bunch of blue paintings. As before, the tower of light was drawn with acrylic paint on a dip pen.

"Dragons at the Tower of Light" is acrylic on illustration board, 6" x 9", July 1991.

Martha the ship captain

Even in our day, a character like this is going to be controversial. The author Linda Grant dePauw, whose characters I illustrated, wanted to make sure that there were people of all sorts on board her ships, rather like the "Star Trek" series so many years ago. But dePauw also set her space saga in an artificial 18th century naval milieu transplanted into space, so having respectful ethnic and racial diversity in this context would be more difficult. Here we see an older woman of color, Martha Edwards, in a high-ranking position, possibly even a ship's captain. DePauw took care to describe this character to me as a warm, caring, motherly person who crochets and knits in between hours of duty. Other authors would almost always cast this character as a swashbuckling bad-ass beautiful young babe with a great figure and a taste for weaponry. I honor dePauw's choices in creating characters for older women and people of different races and ethnicities in science fiction. 

This book was privately published and I still have my complimentary copy. DePauw wrote a sequel to it which was never published. It dealt with yet another very controversial topic which is usually ridiculed and treated as comedy: menopause. Somewhere I have a copy of that manuscript. I have only a vague idea of where it might be in my cluttered dwelling. 

Martha Edwards portrait is watercolor on illustration board, 8" x 10", spring 1990.

Space Shapes

I got into an experimental Photoshop abstract space mood for a while and put this one into a speed-paint for 20 minutes or so. I'd like to be able to do those fabulous incredibly complex starships that I see on deviantART and other fantasy art venues. If I wanted to, I could probably spend more time on this and work these shapes up into plausible spaceships. One of my favorite abstract spaceship artists is a French guy named Steven Martiniere. You can check out the awesomeness of his work here, just look for his portfolio on the home page. Someday I'll do work like that. If I get away from the vineyards that is. But…I like the vineyards. Spaceships are a dime a dozen, but a good bottle of wine? Maybe a better value. Somewhere out in space, are vineyard ships, or perhaps even terraformed asteroids, making vintages for the Imperial markets, crafting wine under alien starlight. Kind of a French state of science fictional mind, Bordeaux among the nebulae.

Photoshop, 7" x 3.5", September 11, 2014.

Another night of falling stars

Longtime readers of this Blog may remember my posting about a late summer holiday in my imaginary world of the Noantri. I described it in detail in 2010 so if anyone is interested, I will refer them here. The holiday involves the commemoration of an annual meteor shower which  takes place at the beginning of a life-giving flood of a desert river. They simulate the meteor shower with fireworks displays. The holiday is called the "Night of the Falling Stars." I imagine that in a world without gods or religions, people would honor various natural phenomena and build observatory-temples. But those would be a more peaceful, older, and more controlled race than our own. 

Markers on sketchbook page, more added in Photoshop, about 3" x 6", September 10, 2014.

Cloud Castle Blue

This is a really pretty picture, even if it's tiny. I did it, as I vaguely remember, as a friendship/hospitality gift for some people who allowed me to stay in their home after a convention. The background is airbrushed and the castle is drawn in white acrylic paint, liquefied so I could use it with a dip pen. Nowadays there are some very nice markers which will do the same thing. I also kept myself from adding too many colors into the mix so all you get is blue and white with a touch of purple. I wouldn't mind making some more of these, just for pretties. 

Much vintage art has come to the By-Product this weekend and after because I've been suffering from a dreadful cold that just leveled me over the weekend. It's slowly getting better but I am still not at a normal level of energy. Most unpleasant and not sweet and cloudy.

"Cloud Castle Blue" is acrylic on illustration board, 6" x 9", July 1991.

Pressed into Service

As I said while describing my portrait of main character Maggie Steele, 18th-century customs prevail on the spaceships in Linda Grant dePauw's book. The interiors are wood timbers, they use old technologies like ropes and winches, and the ships carry livestock on board as well as hydroponic vegetable gardens. And when they need unskilled crew or lower-deck servants, they go to the streets, the jails, and reformatories on Earth and press criminals and malfeasants into service against their will, just as the 18th century fighting navy did. DePauw knows a huge amount about these archaic naval customs and finds a way to integrate them into a science-fictional context. 

This character, Rebecca  Petrie, is a violent street kid pressed into service on the wooden spaceship of the story. She does all kinds of nasty hi-jinks and rebellious actions before she surprisingly becomes one of the heroes of the book in the later chapters. The outfit she is wearing, including the bare feet, is taken from 18th century history.

Watercolor on illustration board, 8" x 10", spring 1990.

The Alchemical Dragon

This is one of my all-time favorites of my own art, but I've never posted it here because its photograph was messed up. The sky had lost all its color and there were reflection specks on it due to a shiny coating I added to it. Finally I decided to just re-do the flaws with Photoshop so this is what the restored piece looks like. Some people would say the dragon's neck is too short, that it looks like a winged iguana. Well it has some iguana characteristics but have these people ever seen a real dragon? No, only the fossils, they died out eons ago. OK there. 

As for the alchemical symbolism: The dragon, symbolizing the prima materia or Original Stuff of Matter, holds the glowing gold-red Philosopher's Stone, symbolizing the end-result of

the alchemical Great Work.

"The Alchemical Dragon" is acrylic on illustration board, 12" x 15", February 1993, restored in Photoshop. Click for larger view.

First Friday with Truck

During the summer and early fall, Falls Church businesses and art interests put on a gathering called "First Friday," where on the first  Friday of May through October, a parking lot becomes the host area for a vintage car show, live music, and general socializing. I did these little drawings at September's First Friday. The white 60's style building at the upper left is a historic designation, while the mid-50s truck on the right, beautifully restored, is a Chevy rarity. Due to planning changes, only a few thousand of them were built and sold. This one had a nice midnight blue sparkling paint job and teak inlays in the cargo bed floor. Very nice vehicle.

Colored pencil and Pitt technical pen ink on sketchbook page, about 8" x 4", September 5, 2014.

Commercial Landscape

I sat on a hard concrete stoop in front of a bank to do this on-site cityscape. (Sitting on a hard surface like that was not such a good idea for back pain, but this is live art.) I drew Virginia politician and car dealer Don Beyer's Kia dealership. This building was remodeled in the last few years when Beyer started selling Kia's. He is originally known for selling Volvo's. The red plane with the logo intersects the old building in a post-modern commercial geometry. The entire area is almost completely covered with cars, whether parked at the dealership or packing the rush-hour roads. As a one-time Greek scholar, the KIA logo misleads me. In standard Western script, i.e. Roman, the upside-down angle of the third letter, without the horizontal crossbar, is meant to be understood as a capital "A." But in Greek, it's a capital Lambda, which is the Greek letter L. So in Greek, the cars are "Kil." Well, the original makers of these vehicles use a completely different form of writing, Korean "hangeul," but you wouldn't put that on a car made for Americans, although it would be kind of cool. Or "ceul." Or "Kil."

Pitt technical pen black ink on sketchbook page, about 5" x 8", September 4, 2014. Accent color added in Photoshop.

Note to my devoted fans, all 10 of them: I've decided to continue blogging here on my daily schedule, as much as possible. The process keeps me working on art and deadlines, even if it's only my own deadline. It gives me a "Nobbs-ian" moment of Creativity every day even if what I put up might not be large or of high quality. Doodles count as Art By-Products. Cheers folks.

Futuristic Ancient Roman

Here's another character concept sketch from the same science fictional world as the Welsh brother and sister of the previous post. "Julia" is a woman commander in a futuristic civilization that has retained its origins in the Roman Empire. That is, imagine imperial Rome of the first couple of centuries A.D. (or C.E.) upgraded to a modern, gender-neutral, technological society. I'll  never know what relationship Julia had to the Welsh family ship  -  enemy? ally? imperial overlord? but what counted for me was the gender-neutral concept, where a woman could be an imperial commander, and of course the fashions, which had to convey authority and elegance but not brass-bra female dominance. I borrowed the outfit from an Art Deco movie of the 1930s. Needless to say, an outfit like this would not make it in modern movies, illustrations, or comic books. She would have to be wearing a skin-tight bodysuit with scale-patterned armor pads, plus a few fearsome-looking hand weapons. Not a bad concept, but Julia wouldn't wear it.

Character study is watercolor and inks on illustration board, 8" x 10", June 1990.

Fabulous Military Science Fiction You'll Never Read...

Here's more character concept art I did for a private client. He was a fan of military history and Celtic culture (the standard mix for late 20th century science fiction fans) and was writing a science fiction saga about a heroic family of Welsh origin who manned and defended their own battle worthy spacecraft. At least this is what I surmised as I never got to read any text. There may never have been a first draft, let alone anything published. I got scattered notes to create my images from. Above is Captain David Glendower, a handsome hunk along the James T. Kirk line. Next is his sister Gwynneth, of course red-haired, an action heroine with a blaster. She's his first officer, after all this is a family ship. More than that I cannot tell you, because I don't know. If I go to certain conventions in my area, I still see the person who commissioned these portraits and created their world. He's 25 years older, still wandering around with his sheaf of research papers (or probably an iPad or other mobile device), perhaps still thinking about writing that second chapter.

Both these images are watercolor and ink on illustration board, 8" x 10", June 1989.

18th century space opera girl hero

In March of 2013 I posted a book cover I painted for a "space opera" adventure story by a historian and writer named Linda Grant dePauw. My essay for that was quite long and rather than having me repeat it, you can view it here. DePauw imagined a spacefaring future in which spaceships were made out of some kind of (magical) wood, and the culture and warfare was based on 18th century models. But unlike those days, dePauw's society was completely gender-equal and women served in all ranks, from servant to Captain.

This young lady, whose name is Maggie Steele, was an officer aboard one of these ships when an alien attack killed off all the higher-ranking officers, leaving her in charge of the entire ship. DePauw commissioned not only a book cover but lots of concept and character art. Maggie looks good enough but I have always thought that her pants are too tight and must be quite uncomfortable. 

Watercolor and ink on illustration board, 8" x 10", spring 1990.

Sharp-nosed readers may notice that I missed a day blogging here (September 1). Eventually I will run out of vintage art to post after all these years, and I can't always turn out a new sketch every day. I'll have to make a decision about whether to keep it up every day or go to a different schedule. If I don't post every day, I run the risk of getting lazy and not posting at all. If any one of you has an opinion on this highly important and critical matter, you're welcome to comment.