Memory Landscape of Virginia

I got some new markers for doing sketching. These are water-based pen markers with a wide brush tip and a pen tip on the other end. I already have dozens of them but some of them are dried up or don't fit my color choices. The difficulty in water-based markers is that the colors fade so you have to keep your work covered. The more expensive water-based markers use pigment instead of dye so it might not fade as fast, but it still is not lightfast. This sketch of the Virginia countryside in winter (with leafless vines) was done with some of these new markers especially the grayscale and sepia ones. The most difficult color to find in these markers is light sky blue, which I used on the sky in this drawing. I'm always looking for light and pastel marker colors. I expect to do on-site drawing with these once I have sorted them out and stored them in a nice portable box, which is one of my favorite art things to do.

Markers on sketchbook paper, 7" x 4", February 29, 2016. This may be from memory but I assure you it looks just like the real thing.

4 Creatures

I don't know, maybe I had too much coffee today, but when it came time for blogging these showed up rather than the pin-up girl. You takes what you can get I suppose. These look like a combination of mammalian and shellfish, except for the "Armapillow" plush critter at upper right. He actually has six feet but one of them is hidden behind the others.

Tech pen black ink on sketchbook page, about 3 1/2" x 3 1/2", February 28, 2016.

My Neighbor the Jedi

My neighbors' son wanted me to do his portrait as a Jedi Knight, so I drew him brandishing his light-saber. Back in those days I'd draw my portrait subject in freehand pencil but I admit guiltily that when I do a portrait these days I use photographs. I even enlarge the photograph and trace it so I get just what I want, and I enhance it later. He wanted a sort of spacesuit look for his costume, so I made it up. I think he was pleased with the final results though since my photo of the portrait was really poor I don't have much of a record of it.

He wanted to be a Jedi but for him the closest thing was the military. He became a medical officer and flew countless missions in various war zones saving wounded people from the battlefields and bringing them home. I have no call to be any kind of knight or warrior or rescuer so I am awed by people who sincerely make this their life work. He's been in the military almost 30 years. There are real Jedi I guess.

Pencil on sketchbook page, about 9" x 6", May 12, 1982.

Construction Fail 3

Here we see two bewildered construction workers trying to fit their beam into a hole which is too wide for it. I'll bypass the obvious rude remarks to explain that this is about programming and products which do not fit the client's existing infrastructure. Infrastructure is such an exciting word. I can almost use it without sounding pretentious, but just almost.

Ink on illustration board, about 6" x 9", early 1990s.

City of Light revisited

Back in thrilling 1995 I painted one of my "fantastic cities" paintings for a private client. I filled the scene with wild and fanciful buildings, each one in a different color and style. I called it "City of Light" and based it on the ancient Persian mythology of the bridge from earth to heaven that the soul crosses. You can see it on my website in the "Fantastic Cities" section. 

For this current assignment which is a book cover, there are many fanciful buildings described so I have brought back some of the ideas from "City of Light." The yellow round thing at the right is not a Ferris wheel but a cybernetic halo around the head of an artificial intelligent robot horse. You'll see it all in a few days when I'm done.

Photoshop on Cintiq, about 5" x 5", February 2016. 

Dragon Train

Two long hoots, one short one, then another long hoot: the Dragon Train is crossing through an intersection. Clad in organic metal, burning dragon fire in his steam belly, he faithfully powers cargo and passengers through the rail lines. No need for a human engineer; the Dragon knows where he's going. When it's time to rest, he crawls off his platform and lies down in the coal yard for a well-deserved dragonish slumber.

Ink and markers on sketchbook page, 4 1/2" x 4", February 23-24, 2016.

Construction Fail part 2

I wish I remembered what software-industrial concern ordered these illustrations, but I'm not sure I ever knew. The client is still around so I suppose I could ask her. Here instead of grinding the bolt down to size, the bolt gets stuck in the hole and breaks, dismaying and even endangering the construction workers. Note that I made one of the construction workers female. The personnel in this series of cartoons is a tech office group, not real construction workers. I have never seen a female construction worker in all my life and I wonder why with all the gender-diversity and gender-equality action going on in our world. I guess that construction work needs physical strength which usually women don't have so they can't work on sites. I've seen women helping at house-building for charitable work like "Habitat for Humanity," but not on high-rises or industry or commercial buildings. There are a whole lot of places where a male-only workforce is still required but people, even activist types, don't talk about it much. This article from 2014 does a good job explaining why so few women work in construction.

Ink brushwork on illustration board, 6 1/2" x 8 1/2", early '90s.

Library of Congress Minerva Mosaic

I used to visit Washington, DC to visit friends and made many drawings there. Now that I live so close to the Capital City, you'd think that I would visit there and sketch all the time but as of now I hardly ever venture there. The reason is that I don't want to be stuck in crowds on the Metro nor do I want to drive in and struggle to find any parking space. The whole area is much more difficult to move about in than it was 25 years ago early in my stay here. Metro stations are inaccessible for parking unless you already have a pre-paid ticket. So I draw suburban scenes, or country wineries. But back in the 1980s I was able to draw the neoclassical heroic architecture of Washington including one set done in the Library of Congress. This hallway ends in a majestic mosaic portrait of the Goddess Minerva (or Athena), the goddess of war and sometimes peace. The art was done by American 19th century symbolist Elihu Vedder, who has been a huge but un-mentioned influence on current American fantasy art. You can see this hallway and the Athena art in a well-produced Library of Congress series of websites.

Readers: Sometime a month or so ago I posted my 2500th Art Byproduct. I have been publishing pictures from my sketchbooks and archives for almost 8 years. Sooner or later I'm gonna run out of old pictures to post. I still draw new ones of course but I don't always do one every day. What do I do with the blog? If I go to an every-other-day posting schedule I may slack off and stop posting altogether. I know there's only 10 of you readers out there but you seem to enjoy my posting and continuity. Comments are welcome.

Minerva hall drawing is tech pen on sketchbook page, 7 1/2" x 8", June 19, 1985.

Naked Mountain Lasagna

Winter is still good for wining. And if you go to "Naked Mountain" winery in Markham, Virginia from January to March, you can choose to feast on a big plate of lasagna, either meat or cheese-based, along with a cup or bottle of their wine. My Wine Team friends and I went for the lasagna feast on this "Wine Saturday" and I did some drawing as always. The place was crowded on a sunny day which seemed more like spring than winter. I'll be drawing and enjoying the food and wine there again soon I hope.

Brown tech pen ink on sketchbook page, 6" x 9", February 20, 2016. Colored pencil colors added in the studio.

Young Engineers Workshop

I went to an amateur engineers' gathering in Reston, VA. It was gaming night so they mostly weren't there to work with gadgets, but some of them were. They weren't all young, there were a few middle-aged folks as well and lots of snacks for everyone. I took the Cintiq on one of its first out-of-studio excursions (Starbucks doesn't count because someone else was using it). 

The Cintiqian must contend with various factors: reflected light on the screen, ambient light of room, and stability of tablet on its base. I want it to be propped up on a "kickstand" but as I have discovered, the kickstand given to me in the Cintiq package is poorly designed and collapses when I put hand pressure against it. I could place it flat on the table I suppose, or I could take my aluminum desk easel with me thus increasing the weight and bulk of the art gear. Anyway I got it to the proper angle using a roll of puffy quilting. I was able to add the nebulosity to the star scene in my current assignment and after that I made this "digital ink" drawing. The messy pile in the foreground is a backpack (not mine). The figure seen from the back is a young engineer. Many of the people in the workshop came up to me to watch the Cintiq in action. So I will have a few months of gadget status thrills before the Cintiq Companion 3 comes out with futuristic improvements. (Like a built-in kickstand? Are there even plans for a Cintiq Companion 3?) I'm very pleased with the digital inking settings, despite the unwanted pop-up menu.

Photoshop on Cintiq, 6 1/2" x 7", February 19, 2016. Tones added in Photoshop later.

Construction Fail part 1

During the early and mid-'90s I did commercial art for tech magazines and Internet articles. This illustration was commissioned by a friend who at the time was working in tech publishing. The idea I was supposed to illustrate would be metaphorically described as building construction, though it was really about software. In this first panel, a raw and unformed beam is the only thing the builders have to work with. It has to fit into a precise octagonal hole but it doesn't, causing the beam to splinter before it is pressed into fitting. This is of course an undesirable situation. Software, like construction elements, must fit the needs of the structure it is building.

Ink on illustration board, 6" x 8", early 1990s.

Coffee Drinkers in February

Even if the sun shines, it seems to be gloomy in February. We coffee drinkers and gadget users are sick of something, even if winter is especially mild here in Edge City. Characters present themselves in the brown-walled coffee palace. A glum woman with blonde ringlets wearing heavy metal headphones stares into America's Apple of her eye. A chrome-domed fast talker hits the airwaves at right. And at lower left, a portly young man talks with his Eastern Orthodox priest as he prepares for marriage to his fiancee who moved too quickly for me to draw. Just about every one of them has an electronic device of some kind. I lent my Cintiq to a friend sitting beside me while I draw with an old fashioned tech pen on old fashioned paper. That's right, not even an iPad. All characters though.

Tech pen black ink on sketchbook page, 5" x 8", February 17, 2016.

The Prisoner's Miniature Dress Form

My friend in Reston, who specializes in creating costumes that are illuminated with flashing lights, uses this miniature dress form to model designs for later full-size creation. It's only about three feet tall but has its own personality despite having no arms, legs, or head. I drew it as it stood on her craft table, along with coffee and wine and one lit candle. My drawing reminds me of the work of Italian surrealist Giorgio di Chirico, whose figures also look like either dressmaking dummies or those wooden movable dolls used by artists to represent human figures. 

The dress form bears the Number Six, suggesting that the headless tiny lady is imprisoned in the surrealist "Village" of the Sixties-era TV show "The Prisoner." In my opinion one of the greatest TV shows ever, "The Prisoner" shows the struggles of a spy who is held in a resort-style village full of fanciful architecture (a real place, "Portmeirion" in Wales) while unknown but powerful people and entities attempt to break his mind down and extract secret information from him. His name is taken away and he is labeled "Number Six." 

Does this Number Six think about escaping? Can she think at all without a head? I hope that she will someday have her head and limbs restored and be dressed in raiment that lights up to shine on the crafters and bring enlightenment to the dark world.

Tech pen ink on sketchbook page, about 4" x 5 1/2", February 16, 2016.

Finished coloring wine bottles graphic

You may remember that recently I showed you a wine bottle graphic that I was in the process of coloring. Here it is all colored in, not digitally as before but with old-fashioned ink and watercolor. All I need to do is put in the writing and it will be finished. Narrative texts go in the yellow boxes such as you see here. Dialogue is in traditional oval "balloons" and you can see part of one in the upper right. I'm still using the watercolors but when I do the next chapter it will be colored digitally over a hand-done drawing.

Ink and watercolor on illustration board, 5" x 4 1/2", February 16, 2016.

Graphic Novel Panel 1999

I should have done this ten years ago, maybe more. But maybe I didn't have the scanning power for it. Now that I am working with a fairly new scanner and a capable computer, I can finally digitize all the pages of the graphic novel I've been working on for all these years since 1999. Sure there were years when I didn't work on it at all, but just for now I have the time and resources to do it and maybe hopefully finish it. The scene you see here, with the narrative removed from the bar, is an observatory on the upper slopes of Mount Etna ("Aitna" in the story) where you learn some volcanological lore as a group of schoolboys visits the place and hears a talk from a real live geologist.

Ink and watercolor on illustration board, about 4 1/2" x 4 1/2", 1999.

No Day Without a Line

There's a famous motto, originally in Latin and attributed by Pliny the Elder to Apelles, a famous artist of the classical world. "No day without a line." That is, always draw something every day. A lot of the time that's what this Blog is about, showing you my "Drawing of the Day." It's a good thing for an artist to do, whether they are amateur or professional. Doing the DotD (Drawing of the Day) makes me feel like I have been Productive, even if it's only a drawing of a bank waiting room or the stuff on my kitchen table, which is what this is. The box contained four tiny chocolates and was given as a Valentine's Day gift by a friend. It is sitting on a Japanese ceramic tile given by another friend. So the ordinary kitchen table stuff means more than just a random drawing, even if my perspective is skewed.

Technical pen black ink on sketchbook page, about 4 1/2" x 5", February 13, 2015.

Another Rand Strip

Here's another Rand strip, this time from THE FOUNTAINHEAD, the earlier of Rand's major novel efforts. I know you detest Rand and think I'm deluded to like her work, but my towering genius and all-encompassing competence and adventurer skills could not care less about what you think. Well anyway, this one is not from "Atlas Shrugged." It is from the story of flame-haired architect hero Howard Roark, whose buildings you can still see shining against many American cities. Wait, he wasn't real? And the buildings were designed by Germans and Chinese? No way. 

So this little sequence doesn't even have Roark in it. It takes place on the private yacht of newspaper magnate Gail Wynand, where he is dining with his new bride Dominique Francon, who was Roark's lover in the past. English was not Rand's original language and sometimes you can really tell this. In the first panel Dominique says, "This ship is becoming to you." Huh? I think what she really means is, "This ship makes you look good especially since you have so much money and power." He replies, "...Is the art gallery?" As in, with a slight note of uncertainty, what about all the fancy fine art I have collected, doesn't that show that not only am I rich and powerful, but I'm classy and have good taste? She doesn't buy it, which is pretty nervy for a new cultural trophy bride, and she says, "Yes, only that's less excusable." Which means, no matter how many Paul Klee's or Picassos you have, you are still a hustler who clawed his way up from the slums. Then, realizing that maybe Dominique is going to be a bit of a problem, he lights one up and says, "I don't want you to make excuses for me." In other words, I don't give a f**k what you say to me, as long as you keep writing those puffy arts-and-culture columns (she works for his papers, you see) and you make public appearances looking like a gorgeous piece of ass that is mine (a la Donald Trump, who Rand might have just adored.).

Ink on illustration board, about 9" x 3 1/2", early 1980s.

Digital Dagny

Randworld meets Cintiq. I took a picture of a well-known TV player (Gillian Anderson in the revived "X-Files") and turned her into Dagny Taggart, Ayn Rand's railroad heroine. I'm still working on "digital inking." It's odd, though - whenever I try to do a Rand character portrait I end up making them wimpy-looking and rather nice, rather than the hard-faced ruthless egoists they're all supposed to be. Well, only the privileged and the geniuses are allowed to be ruthless egoists, turning the grand mill wheel of Capitalism with their hydropower. The rest of us are supposed to serve them as loyal and humble employees.

I have been reading - for the last two years - a delightful deconstruction of "Atlas Shrugged" by an Atheist blogger named Adam Lee. Every Saturday he puts up another blog entry on a following chapter of "Atlas." He's almost to the end of the book now and I hope he will publish the whole thing someday, along with the riotously funny satires of some of his commentators. Read it all here at the "Daylight Atheism" blog at "Patheos."

Digital Dagny is Photoshop on Cintiq, about 5" x 7", February 12, 2016.

Dreary Bank Chairs

People often ask me, "I'd love to draw but I don't know WHAT to draw, I don't have any models." I tell them, every time, "There's always something to draw, even if it's the most boring thing you could see." For instance, these upholstered seats, installed in a waiting room area of a local bank, where I was sitting in yet another episode of trying to unlock the funds in my late mother's accounts. This is what I saw, so it's what I drew. People occasionally sat in one of the chairs, but they didn't stay long enough for me to draw them. So aspiring sketchers,  just remember one thing: keep your sketchbook and pen or pencil with you at all times, and you may get the opportunity to draw a water bottle or a houseplant or even a wastebasket!

Tech pen black ink on sketchbook page, about 7" x 5", February 10, 2016.

Stripping Ayn Rand

Every so often I re-read parts of the Notorious Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED as a kind of verbal jolt. I regard her writing as a drug-fueled fantasy (which it really is, as she was on amphetamines when she wrote it) guaranteed to cause turmoil no matter who reads it. I don't agree with her politics, her psychology is just plain wrong, her economics are loony, and her writing mostly dreadful. But her "cinematography" and her characters and her descriptions are a thrilling apocalypse of Dieselpunk magnificence, roaring trains and oil fires and explosions in the same scenes as glamorous babes in evening dresses at evil dinner parties. 

As an illustrator I have always wanted to set Rand in a graphic novel or at least a comic book sequence. I did manage to do a graphic novel-style readout of the first chapter of ATLAS which was published here in 2009. But the copyrights on Rand's work are, as you might suspect given the fanaticism of the Rand fan groups, inviolate. So you won't see any longer attempts at illustration from me, though I think still-picture fan art is OK. 

Back in the 1980s I did two comic-strip style treatments of a moment in a Rand book, one from ATLAS and one from THE FOUNTAINHEAD. They were done in the style of one of the greatest masters of black-and-white comic book art, Alex Toth. The two characters are Ragnar, the philosophical pirate, and Henry Rearden, the steel industrialist. If Rearden looks a bit like Paul Newman, that is intentional.

Another reason I read Rand is to boost my self-esteem in the cold dark winter, so I can drug myself with the illusion that I am one of Ayn Rand's towering geniuses on whom the world rests, which will give me the motivation to crank out more inspiring pictures of wine barrels and volcanoes.

Ink on illustration board, about 9 1/2" x 3 1/2", early to mid 1980s.

Political Football

I managed to avoid watching anything from the Super Bowl whether it was the game or the entertainment at half-time or the commercials on TV. I don't know what I wasted my time on instead, it was probably my usual wandering back and forth from Facebook to Yahoo and other brain-liquefying internet sites. There's gotta be a better way for me to spend time. Productivity is the goal! Kick that ovoid through the interval of those productive post parameters. So the other big time-waster is of course politics, although some of that time might be better spent getting out the vote. Not me, sorry. After the game I drew this little fellow who is a "Political Football" kickable by the unkempt Bernie Sanders.

Tech pen black ink on sketchbook page, 3" x 2.5", February 8, 2016.

Noantri Potato Farmer

Other folks' fantasy tales and graphic stories feature heroes and gods and warriors and nobility and royalty as main characters. I give panel space to farmers, geologists, restaurant owners, and bartenders. And one wizard hero, who won't reappear for quite a while. This guy in the orange tunic is reluctantly digging potatoes (well, some kind of tuber as this takes place 3 million years ago on an alternate Earth) alongside his father or some other male relative, and he stops to look at the nearby volcano belching ash. He realizes then that their farm is going to be buried in volcanic ash, and that is why he is being urged to dig up as many tubers as they can save.

Ink and watercolor on Fabriano illustration board, 4" x 4 1/2", February 2016. From graphic novel in progress, "The Fiery Garden."

50 West Vineyards

It was winter wining at "50 West," a new winery in Middleburg, Virginia. Delicious tastings of Virginia's bounty, especially red wines, were on offer. As usual, whatever the season, I sip and draw, this time with new friends and even Diane, the vineyard's owner looking on. I don't mind "drawing an audience" haha. The snow from the blizzard three weeks ago is almost all gone, making room for the next snow delivery. "50 West" is named after the route it's on, uh, Route 50 going west. 

The upper image shows an unusual metal mesh horse sculpture on their wine terrace, and on the barrel is a fox sculpture, seen from behind. It's lifelike but is only ceramic. The hills in late afternoon were Blue Ridge blue with sun highlights of deep gold.

Ink and colored pencil on sketchbook page, about 8" x 10", February 6, 2016. Some finishing work in the studio.

Showdown in Cybertown

What I remember about this piece was that I did it for one of the internet and computer magazines I was illustrating for in the early to mid-90s. One of the mags was "Visual Basic World" which one or two of my friends might remember. They told me to do a cute theme where a pair of Wild West characters faced off in the main street of Cybertown and drew their weapons - computer mouses. The winner is Visual Basic and you can see the logo on his shirt. I still don't know what Visual Basic was but it's obsolete now, "declared legacy" as the article says. I have the published work in my magazine collection somewhere.

"Showdown in Cybertown" is ink and watercolor on illustration board, 8" x 11", early to mid 1990s.

Noantri Drinker

Like most imaginary folk, my Noantri enjoy a bit of wine every so often. Here's a local at his favorite bar, having a sip of red blend. This image is an excerpt from page 44 of my graphic  novel, "The Fiery Garden." As I continue I will be talking about it more as I would really like to have it finished someday, and I am told that some of my friends like to look at it and read. So you'll see more about NoantriWorld and its techno-psi magic and volcanic eruptions in 2016. The bar you see here is a real place, right down the street from me, at the Idylwood Grill and Wine Bar. They don't know that their place is "transuniversal."

Ink and watercolor on Fabriano illustration board, 4" x 5", February 2016.

International Internet, 1993

Given that most of my friends are techies, it didn't take long before I was doing illustrations for tech books and magazines. This is one of a series I did for a friend in the Boston area who was publishing a comprehensive guide to using the Internet. It was 1993 and the Net had only just escaped the confines of the military, or academic science. The World Wide Web (Golly, PICTURES through this Internet thing!) had just been invented. One of the concepts in the book which needed an illustration was the coming universality of the Net where everyone anywhere on earth could potentially communicate, or buy from, or play games with, anyone else on earth.

I did a somewhat representative group of people, though there weren't any homeless guys checking in at their local library. From upper left clockwise: A Little Old Lady with her cat, checking a newsgroup for antique sales. The cat, official animal of the Internet. A gamer with wireless headphones. A guy from Pakistan, with a a mosque in the back. A Black guy with a nametag, possibly an African or Caribbean official. A  financial trader gal with big shoulder business suit. A Deadhead in a tie dye ordering tickets for the next concert online. (The Grateful Dead were one of the first bands to offer this option.)A political speechwriter or policy writer. And a college student in Japan. Note the stylized "cloud" around the group. This "cloud" concept has been around for a surprisingly long time.

Ink on illustration board, 8" x 10", May 1993. Published in "The Internet Guide for New Users," by Daniel Dern, McGraw-Hill 1993.

No Shadow

Punky Pete, the short version of Punxsutawney Pete the weather-predicting Groundhog, did NOT see his shadow today. Clouds blocked the sunlight in his area of western Pennsylvania. According to the legend, this means that it will be an early spring. The fans partied on regardless. Here you see the existentially challenged rodent pointing at...NOTHING. What is the shadow of a shadow? How do you point at nothing? Does nothing have a shadow? I think some sips of whiskey may be necessary before considering these questions. Congratulations Pete! Spring is coming soon! 

Technical pen and Photoshop finishing on sketchbook page and screen, 3" x 4", February 2, 2016.

Coffeehouse People

It may be rainy February and dim winter, but there is always coffee to be had and drinkers to draw. Also baristas, those tireless black-clad folks buzzing around preparing our buzz for us. Here I am in Starbucks trying to capture the drinker or worker in just a few lines because they are moving around so quickly. The containers are loaded with whipped cream and sweet syrup. A fellow art blogger in southeast Virginia produces far more elaborate coffeehouse people drawings and I admire his artistry, and the skill of anyone who can produce a realistic drawing of a scene with people while he is right there on location. I'm better at grapevines, but they're all leafless and twiggy right now.

Starbucks Coffee is ink on sketchbook page, 5" x 8", February 2, 2016.

Digital Ink Horse Head

I drew a horse head as a digital inking exercise on the Cintiq. The idea is that it should look exactly as if I had drawn it with real ink and dip pen. And the Cintiq stylus does not leak ink all over my hands. Also I can use digital white-out by overlaying the pixels with opaque white. My next assignment involves a fantasy horse head portrait but it won't look "traditional" like this. I don't even think it's worthwhile to call some art "traditionally" made and other art "digitally" made, as if it were fake if done on a computer. It's the artist that makes the quality not the tools. Photoshop on Cintiq has its inconveniences too. Tonight it decided for no reason to go back to the "default" settings, thus bewildering me the user who lost the access to various useful photoshop tools because the icons for them were hidden. I found them when I pressed the "reset workspace" bar. I would like to draw more horses no matter what medium I use. There are plenty of horses in Virginia wine country.

Photoshop on the Cintiq, from a photograph. 5 1/2" x 5", February 1, 2016.