Iconic Organic Bananas

At Trader Joe's I don't get to do my "mid-century" style signs much any more. The spaces are already filled, or they are taken up with more "generic" holiday-time signage for seasonal goodies. But here's a somewhat "doo-wop"-ified banana sign to go on the fruit display. The bottom of this sign, plain yellow and unmarked, will be behind piles of bananas. Spray paint and acrylic markers on foamboard, about 30" wide.

Spaceship Rendezvous

This spaceship picture, painted in August 1986, was originally an unpublished illustration from a book by C.J. Cherryh, "The Kif Strike Back." It was a mixture of airbrush and hand painting, and my notes say that the adhesive masking film I used during the airbrushing tore up the surface of the painting when it was removed. I did the best I could to repair it, and 23 years later, Photoshop has done the rest of the job. This is acrylic on illustration board, 12" x 20", and it was sold to a fan at ConFederation, the World Science Fiction Convention that year in Atlanta, Georgia.

Bluemont Porch

During the saner portions of my recent summer, I traveled through Virginia looking for beautiful, rural nostalgic scenes and architecture to photograph. I found an idyllic place in Bluemont, Virginia, where I went to a fair in September. The weather was sunny and perfect, and I took lots of reference photos there. This image is from one of them. I love porches. They symbolize the ideal nostalgic village life which is probably better in fantasy than in reality. You sit on the porch and people come by in the warm evening. Remember my dream of making the summer last forever. I wish this were my porch, but it's at least my painting. I'm planning to frame it and take it back to Bluemont; perhaps a local antique and art dealer will show it in his shop. And maybe the people who own this house will buy this. Ink and watercolor, 9" x 8".

Exoplanet

This planet picture is part of yet another 1986 astronomical series. I think it was originally meant to portray Jupiter, yet I titled it "Shepherdess and Moons," from the idea of "shepherd moons" orbiting large planets with lots of gravel and smaller moonlets around them. In those days the idea of stars around other planets was just speculation, though many astronomers knew they had to exist. The first detection of a true exoplanet (a planet orbiting another star than the Sun) was in 1995. I think this is an exoplanet.

I tried some non-airbrush texturing in this piece. After I laid down the basic colors with the airbrush, I went back over it with brushwork and semi-transparent layers of acrylic. Then I used a sponge and a paper towel with paint on it to add texture. I painted the planet and its moons and its gravel ring (seen edge-on here) last.

Autumn Improvisation

This is a vaguely Cubistic improvisational doodle from a notebook, colored in Photoshop. It's about autumn leaves and trees, and the original drawing is only about 3 inches square. Drawings like these allow me to try out ideas without having to mess around with acrylic paint or watercolor.

My temperamental iMac (I originally wrote iMad) is back in my studio, now working with the latest operating system, "Snow Leopard." I am now pursuing upgrades to Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Whatever I do, it's gonna cost me money. So far I have never made a cent from any digital artwork I've done, though I have earned some pennies doing a logo design.

Atlas: One More Try

Poor Eddie Willers, Ayn Rand's closest approximation of an "Everyman," tries one more time to convince boss James Taggart to take action. A waste of time indeed. The characters (and I) have spent 14 talky pages trying to save the Rio Norte Line of the mythical Taggart Transcontinental Railroad. By the way, no railroad that I have ever heard of is named for the people who create or run it. All railroads that I know of are named for the places they go, at least until Amtrak.

I have a few pages left to go in this opening scene, which is typical of the pace and thick dialogue of Rand's book. Even with editing for clarity and fitting into word balloons, a comic book adaptation of ATLAS SHRUGGED would be hundreds and hundreds of pages long. I plan to do one more scene following this one and then move on to other things, graphic novel projects that I have been doing slowly for many years. I may return to Rand for illustrations or graphic sequences in the future. I like doing sequential art (comic books, in popular terminology) more than any other type of art, except perhaps architectural art.

I can't imagine that in our big world no one has tried to do a sequential art version of ATLAS. Interestingly, according to Rand biographer Jennifer Burns, a graphic adaptation of Rand's FOUNTAINHEAD was created in the 1940s for serialization in newspapers. I would love to know whether it was still extant, it would be great to see it.

Chili Autumn at Mena's

For autumn and winter, Mena is adding chili to her menu at the snack shop. Come in and warm up with a bowl! I decorated the menu board for this season with lifelike leaves. It is already November, and it's chilly time.

"Bagels, Deli, and Donuts" shop is located in the Falls Plaza East shopping center in Falls Church, Virginia, on Route 7 across from Don Beyer Volvo.