K21 Graviton Branch

I created the "K" series geometrics in honor of the great abstraction artist Wassily Kandinsky. He would have had a wonderful time with Photoshop. This one here, "Graviton Branch," incorporates multiple layers of shape and color with some inspiration from modern speculative physics. And the previous entry here contained branches. It's still a sketch and not by any means a finished Product. But the colors are pretty.

Photoshop, 7" x 10", August 31, 2018.

642: a tree limb

From the book of 642 prompts comes a simple idea, a tree limb. But whose limb is it? The metaphor goes back and forth. Which came first, tree limbs or human limbs? Is it an Ent, a fantasy-humanoid tree from Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings?" If human limbs name a tree, then whose limbs are they? The trees will soon shed their leaves and we will see those limbs unclad.

Tech pen and marker black ink on sketchbook page, 4 1/2" x 4 1/2", August 30, 2018.

Skoteinos the shady

From my Byzantine epic text. This character appears at some point in the story, rather mysteriously. Since I'm not going to go back and look, here is his story re-told. A shabby, middle-aged man meets and joins the group of traveling characters. He is dressed all in grey and has a "bindlestiff" over his shoulder, that is a bag of possessions balanced on a pole over his shoulder, the classic sign of a solo traveler. He introduces himself as "Skoteinos" which in Greek means the "shadowy one." He also bears a long knife or small sword with the word "NIKA" or "victory" engraved on the hilt. Skoteinos and the others fend off many dangers on the road as they journey to Constantinople with the runaway heroine. Only after he saves them does Skoteinos reveal that he is really a bishop. He had been driven out of his diocese because he was (correctly) accused of being a heretic. After revealing this, he disappears into the darkness never to be seen again. I based Skoteinos, like many others, after one of my Brandeis Greek professors.

Ink and watercolor on sketchbook page, 4 1/2" x 11 1/2", June 1975.

Chaotic Webula

During the 1980s and 1990s I produced what seems now like hundreds of small space pictures painted in acrylic with airbrush spray. I did them in "editions," ten or more at a time, all the same size, using bright color schemes and spatter effects to simulate stars. I painted in nebulas, moons, spaceships, and other features with an old-fashioned paintbrush. I was inspired by views through the telescopes of that era. Nowadays the Hubble Space Telescope and other super-high resolution searchers on mountaintops have brought us images in far more detail than my spray-painted little scenes could depict. This nebula piece shows a tangled network of swirling threads of gas, which is fairly accurate in the astronomical world as the Hubble was already in action.

"Chaotic Web" is acrylic on black illustration board, 10" x 7", January 1998. Click for a larger view.

Hyginus the courtier slave

This fellow is another character from my Byzantine Codex text. He is "Hyginus," a highly educated slave in the court of Heliodorus the eunuch shipmaster. He doesn't have a big part in the story. I put him in as an analogue of one of my Greek professors at Brandeis. His name was Higgins so I gave him the name "Hyginus" which not only resembles Higgins but means "clean" in ancient Greek.

I never gave Hyginus a story or character action. Educated people could be kept as slaves in the ancient world, to do jobs like teaching, language interpretation, accounts, and even espionage. Educated and skilled slaves could earn and keep money.  Hyginus was probably a youthful high-ranking captive from some military campaign in Britain or Europe, who gained enough proficiency to make him valuable to a business big shot like Heliodorus. Hyginus expected to buy his freedom with his earnings, but I never found out whether he did.

Ink and watercolor on sketchbook page, about 5" x 4 1/2", spring 1975.

What I Saw: Entanglement

It's in my studio. I took some things apart and discarded them. Some of these go somewhere and some of them don't, just like me. There are some chargers which have no energy and some memories whose meaning and title are forgotten. Someday I'll sort it all out. The glass globe is a hot flash generator.

Canon S90 photograph, August 24, 2018.

Wrapped Reality

This is what happens when you have too many markers and colored pencils on top of them. And you try once again to do a purple doodle. The reality behind this is a stack of clean, firmly folded T-shirts. The idea of wrapping up the cosmos in violet cotton jersey might not be a bad idea, after using Cosmic Photoshop to clear up the messy parts.

Markers and colored pencils on sketchbook page, a bit of Photoshop. 3" x 5", August 25, 2018.