Cosmic Ruins

This Photoshop sketch is inspired by the wildly complex environments done in digital media by professional SF illustrators. Specifically the work of this artist, Alex Ruiz, who really takes advantage of all the neat stuff Photoshop lets you do. I am not anywhere near the skill level of Ruiz, but I can hope to be at some point in the future.

In this scene, a techno-mage drifts through a place of vast ruins, sustained by his telekinetic bubble platform. I would like one of these bubble platforms for myself. They don't go very fast but they are super for touring above ground or in difficult environments.

Photoshop, 10" x 7", January 14, 2011, about five hours of work.

Cambridge Twigs

When I lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had a lot of time to draw. It's hard to imagine now what it was like to just drift along and somehow get work done without a schedule. Nowadays I'd just sleep all day and browse the web all night, but back then I didn't have the web to browse, because it didn't exist. A different world, indeed. So I could go out and draw scenes in my neighborhood, with real pens, because I didn't have a Wacom tablet.

This drawing probably dates from the mid-80s. It is the backyard and back porch of a house in my neighborhood. I believe I drew this with something called an "ArtPen" which was a hybrid of bendable dip pen and portable inkwell pen. I did at least the initial drawing outside, on site, and then I brought it back to the studio and finished it with the lines and details and a bit of color. You can see from this scan that the original paper has yellowed. There's some Photoshop retouching in this image, just in the sky where the original light blue has faded, and some whitening around the yellowed edges.

Nowadays with my day job taking up a lot of my time I wonder whether I could ever go back to that slower, more free-wheeling lifestyle I had in Cambridge. Of course back then I complained that I wasn't making enough money and was out of it socially and professionally. I guess you can't win. As for the ArtPen, it had some bad design flaws (it leaked and spattered) and I gave up using it, preferring the Rapidograph for architectural and on-site drawing.

Drawing of twiggy Cambridge back porch is 8 1/2" x 10 1/2", ink and watercolor on Bristol board.

Enlil Techno-mage frame

Yesterday you saw Enlil the techno-mage in his seaside studio. Here's another Enlil-in-studio image, this one from my graphic novel. It's from a rather dark-colored page where spy stuff is going on. This is my first attempt at coloring an ink drawing from THE FLAMING RAMPARTS, in Photoshop. It's hard to keep the layers separate and maintain the integrity of the drawing. When I started RAMPARTS in 1999, I didn't have the capability to color the graphics digitally. I will still color with watercolor at least until Chapter 2 is done. I'm only going to show this one frame because I have not decided whether to release RAMPARTS as a webcomic. I would like to actually publish it on paper with real graphic novel production values.

Frame is 3 1/2" x 4 1/2", second frame on the top row.

Enlil Techno-mage in his studio

NoantriWorld again. Enlil, the great techno-mage, historian, academic, and media figure, spent his weekends in a seaside mansion on the Mediterranean coast. Even though Enlil was a monastic type, he seemed to gravitate to luxurious surroundings, all of which were made possible by admiring patrons. This is his studio in an upper room of the Mediterranean mansion. You can see some of the scenery out the windows, as well as a panoramic view out the turreted bay to the left. There are bookshelves filled with recorded media and texts, as well as memorabilia and collectibles. The long-haired mage himself sits at his computer table, perhaps pondering philosophical thoughts. Some of the things in that studio come from my own studio, for instance the three-drawer IKEA rolling cabinet directly to Enlil's right. So Enlil shopped at IKEA too.

Drawing from my "Noantri" notebook, ink and colored pencil, about 9" x 7", 2000.

Click on the picture for a somewhat larger view.

The Western Master

You saw the "Tibetan Master" earlier on the By-Product, so here's another idealized portrait of a Master, this time of the Western Esoteric sort, dressed in a white suit with a little ankh watch fob. He stands between the black and white pillars of the Golden Dawn temple.The name of the character is "Count Roberto deGerome Garcia, " a variation on the Grateful Dead's musical Master, Jerry Garcia.

In those days I was much taken by the concept of a Master, especially a Master Adept. What would he (a Master would always be a "he," it seems) be like? Most of the "real" people who claimed, or were thought to be occult Masters, were at best strange types and usually nutjobs who did all sorts of unpleasant things to their disciples. But what would a real Master be like? And what would the occult and spiritual practices of such a person consist of? I used to ask the question, do the Masters of an Art still practice and do maintenance exercises, or are they beyond the usual day-by-day toiling? Since I never met a real Master, I never found out. But I have an idea now, twenty-three years later; if I ever met a real Master, he would practice more than I would ever do. Dismaying thought that, and also, it's still a "he."

"The Western Master" is 9" x 12", ink and watercolor on illustration board, January 1988.

Winter Wining

For "Wine Saturday" I visited Unicorn Winery in Amissville, VA., about an hour's drive from my home. I've encountered Unicorn's wines at wine festivals but this was the first time I visited their winery. As usual it's in a place that's beautiful even in the winter. The wine lodge is near a pond (now frozen over) and the vineyard rows, twiggy and leafless in winter, come right up to the winery grounds, as you can see in this drawing. In my Virginia wine experience, I have found Unicorn's line of wines to be some of the best I've tasted. Especially nice was their "Table Rock" white blend, of which I bought a bottle. You can see a bit of "Table Rock" in the lower left part of this sketch I did of their grounds, through the window of the wine tasting lodge. While I was sipping wine, there was a snow flurry, which I added to the sky.

The original of this sketch is ink with colored pencil shading, but my intent was to color the drawing in Photoshop once I got home. So what you see here is a mix of ink, colored pencil, and Photoshop transparent colors and textures, with white sparkles of snow added in digitally as well. Size is about 8" x 11".

Another photoshop doodle on ice

Just another Photoshop doodle, playing around with the "scatter" tool. The general theme is "ice," something I will see more of in the next days. I am told it may snow. Somehow no matter how modern and technological a place I live in, winter can still have its effect. I forgot the pointy icicles though.

Photoshop, 7" x 7", January 2011.