Back to Bluemont

Here I am back in Bluemont, at least artistically. This house is on the main road of Bluemont, Virginia, a beautiful tiny town in the foothills of the Appalachians. I took the reference photo for it when I went to the town-wide Bluemont Fair in September. But the house really didn't look like this. In reality, this Victorian edifice is in disrepair, and it was further disarrayed by haphazard attempts at restoring it. Using my architectural rendering skills, I have portrayed this house as it should be, if the repair job was perfect. I have also given the place a landscaping makeover. If you look at the first floor facing us, you see a lot of windows. These are where a part of what was once a wrap-around porch was turned into an enclosed sitting-room. I suppose a complete restoration would remove this and turn it back into a porch, but I'm leaving it there. I wouldn't mind living in this house, if the renovation job really could happen. I hope I can revisit Bluemont for real.

Ink and watercolor on illustration board, 8" x 10", December 2009.

Alien Pattypans

What if we encountered intelligent, technological aliens, but they looked like - or even were - edible vegetables? Or perhaps just their spaceships looked like that. These alien vessels resemble pattypan squash. I'm sure that some science fiction writer has done a story with that turnaround-from-normal idea, that the humans EAT the alien visitors because they are delicious. But if they had spaceships, they probably would know how to defend themselves. I have always found squash disturbing. I think they are aliens anyway. And there I am working in a grocery store. Sorry, it's late at night/early morning even for me.

"Alien Pattypans," acrylic on illustration board, 7" x 10", January 1987.

Busy at Starbucks

Waiting for my car to have its regular maintenance, I stopped by a Starbucks, sipped and munched, and drew this drawing. The Starbucks was packed with people on business or break or just meeting up. The alien-spaceship-looking objects above the coffee drinkers are light fixtures. Stylized flames at the right advertise Starbucks fancy coffee and merchandise. Location is Tysons Corner, Edge City, outside of Washington, DC.

Protostars

Here I am, back in space after the Darkovercon show is over. I'm a few light-years back in space/time, returning to transcribing my slide archives to digital files. This piece is called "Protostars." In the nebula, gas and dust clump together to form marshmallows, which then heat up and get toasty due to gravity pushing the gas together until the atoms collide. When the outward pressure from the heat of atomic collisions equals the inward pressure from gravity, then the warm blobs are ready to eat. There's something a little odd about my cosmology, but I can't quite stick to the point here.

"Protostars" is acrylic on illustration board, 10" x 7", January 1987.

Procession of the Chair Towers

After the convention was over I stayed another day rather than drive home in the dark when I was tired. So I roamed about the deserted hotel looking for things to draw. I found these towers of piled-up chairs in the large auditorium room where our events had been. I sat and drew them, intrigued by their stacked forms, reminding me of a giraffe, or a centipede upright, or a parade of walking skyscrapers. But what I really want to know is, how did the hotel people get these stacked up so high? Did the more nimble workers crawl up the sides to place more chairs at the top? They are too heavy and unbalanced for people to lift to add more chairs from the bottom. So they must have had some sort of machine to do it, like a cherry-picker or something. But I never saw any such contraption. However, there must be a simple answer to this mystery.

Orange Puffy Boots for God

I wore these orange puffy boots at DarkoverCon during Friday afternoon and evening. I matched them with a blazing orange tunic and sash. Drawing is colored in Photoshop. DarkoverCon is one of the few places and times when I can indulge my love of putting on costumes. These boots were made by the "Rocket Dog" fun shoe company and are no longer available. They are for "apres-ski" wear though that situation ("apres-ski") won't ever apply to me. NO SNOW! As is my tradition, I switch my theme color to purple during December, which is the Catholic/Anglican time of "Advent" or the four weeks before Christmas. Catholic/Anglican priests wear purple vestments at services during this time. I am a Catholic Christian, but I don't do much devotional or service activity. At least I can show forth the colors.

Darkovercon Interior

As with the last 30 years, December begins with my return from DarkoverCon. This hotel, currently the Crowne Plaza in Timonium, Maryland, has been the setting for the convention since about 1988. It features an enormous atrium, with a slanting roof, an industrial space worthy of an old-time metal factory or airplane hangar. In the earlier days, there was a swimming pool in the atrium, which connected to another part of the pool outdoors. The whole space stank of chlorine from this pool. When the Crowne Plaza took the hotel over, they mercifully removed the pool and filled in the pit, leaving a vast flat plain on which anything, any event, can be staged. Here is a view of it from my second-floor room, which looked out on the interior. It's before the convention started, and the tables are already set up for the vendors, but there is not a soul in sight at 8 PM when I did this drawing.

DarkoverCon didn't have a lot of attendance this year. Every year it gets smaller. I would guess that not more than 150 people attended, at least for the whole weekend. Some people showed up only for one day. I didn't sell many pictures, and made only a small amount of money, not at all enough to cover my expenses. I sold "Plasma Flames," "Calatrava's Bridge," and "Meteor Wing," which you have seen earlier on this Weblog.

I had a good time anyway, enjoying meeting with friends I only see once or twice a year face to face. I held "Salon Pyracantha" and much wine was consumed. Now it's back to the holiday cookies at work, and the drawing board in the home studio.