Deryni Couple miniatures

The Deryni are a race of psychically empowered humans who lived among normal humans in a medieval civilization created by author Katherine Kurtz. Their origins are obscure, perhaps either extraterrestrial or elvish. Purebred Deryni look a bit like elves, with fair hair and brilliant eyes, but no pointed ears. They can interbreed with humans and so a number of empowered half-Deryni exist in Kurtz' world, whether for good or ill. The normal folk persecute the Deryni as witches and heretics. Kurtz' Deryni books contain many graphic depictions of this brutality.

Two of Kurtz' favorite characters are Rhys and Evaine, a married pair of full-bred Deryni. Rhys is a physician and psychic healer. Evaine is a scholar and researcher, the daughter of a great Deryni statesman, Camber of Culdi. In these miniature portraits, Rhys in the symbolic green of a Healer shows the tools of his trade, a scalpel and a bunch of herbs. Evaine holds a distaff for hand-spinning fiber, something which any good woman of any class would do in those days of old.

Katherine Kurtz is married to Scott MacMillan. They're friends of mine, and I did these nametags for them to wear at public occasions and conventions. But I decided to do a character switch with the portraits, symbolic of marital devotion: the man wears his wife's portrait and the woman wears her husband's portrait. This exchange didn't quite go as planned, as there were too many questions asked about why the nametags were switched.

Rhys and Evaine portrait miniatures are ink and watercolor (some restoration in Photoshop) on Fabriano paper, each 2 1/4" x 3 1/2", August 1984. Click on the pic for a bit larger view.

Leesburg Side Porch

This is a well-restored porch in the town of Leesburg. I love porches and would like to live in a house with one, the way I did when I was in Cambridge, Mass. You can do all sorts of container landscaping with it and you can sit outside in good weather and still be under shelter. Porches have been said to increase good community feeling because back in the "old days" before air conditioning people would sit out on their porches and visit each other and socialize. I don't know whether that happens any more anywhere in the USA. This building may be a private house, or it could be a gift shop. I am not sure whether it is completely legal for me to make a publicly viewed art piece from a privately owned house without the owners' permission. I have changed enough details on this house so that it is not easily recognizable.

Leesburg porch picture is brown ink from technical pens on Fabulous Fabriano Paper, 7 1/2" x 10", October 19-20, 2011. Color will be added later. Click on the pic for a somewhat larger view. With a needle-pointed, old fashioned Rapidograph tech pen, you can get a lot of deeee-tail into a drawing.

Tolkien Hobbit Miniatures

Laura and David, the previous nametag people, had (and have) two children. Sam was born in 1984, and Eleanor was born in 1986. Though these are family names, they not so coincidentally were also important characters in Tolkien's Middle-earth mythos. Sam Gamgee was the incredibly loyal gardener who accompanied Frodo on his quest to return the Ring of Power to its origin. Eleanor (spelled "Elanor" in the books) was Sam Gamgee's daughter. She is holding the book of Middle-Earth's history and mythology, the "Red Book of Westmarch." Both these portraits were done when the future owners were just babies, and the faces are, like the previous two, idealized character portraits and not representative of any real person, at least, not in this world.

Sam and Eleanor's nametag miniatures are the usual configuration. Sam's is from February 1985, and Eleanor's is from February 1987.

Tolkien Couple Miniatures

David and Laura were a married pair who loved Tolkien's characters and world. They were some of my best friends during the 1980s when we all lived in Massachusetts. I helped raise their children and we enjoyed many good times together gardening and eating Japanese food in local restaurants. When it came time to do nametag miniatures for them, they asked not for their own portraits but of their favorite Tolkien characters, in these two, Aragorn and Princess Arwen Evenstar. Aragorn is dressed in the heraldic armor described by Tolkien and bears a royal banner, also described in "Lord of the Rings." Arwen holds one of the Rings of Power. This was long before the movie versions of "Lord of the Rings" came out.

Laura and David are no longer together, and we have all moved in very different directions, but I still can remember our good times together when I see these little character portraits.

Both miniatures are, as always, ink and watercolor on Fabriano paper, 2 1/4" x 3 1/2",

February 1984.

"Star-a-Star" miniature

This nametag portrait commission mystified me until the guy explained it to me. He wanted his portrait as one of the "Grey Lensmen," the proto-Jedi Knights of the great early science fiction of E.E. "Doc" Smith. These heroes wandered around the galaxy in their space cruisers, righting wrongs and fighting space crime. According to my portrait person, "Star-a-Star" was the code name for one of the Lensmen characters. It may have also had some computer code significance for the portrait guy. It's been a while (a century?) since I read any of these books so if any one of you knows where this codename occurs, or has familiarity with the "Lensmen" series, I'd love to hear more. I remember having a lot of fun reading the books, and wonder why they haven't been made into films, comics, or games. There seemed to be a lot of good stuff to illustrate in them and I would be interested in it. Anyway, it was all a long time ago...

"Lensman" nametag miniature is ink, watercolor, and gouache, 3 1/2" x 2 1/4", December 1984.

Douglas Skyrocket miniature

In the early to mid-80s I used to hang out with science fiction author Shariann Lewitt. We would build worlds, try out plots, and explore esotericism together. She had ambitions to be a famous s.f. novelist, as I had ambitions to be an s.f./fantasy illustrator. She got further along in her dream career than I did. We drifted apart in the later 80s and she moved to the Boston area where she now teaches writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I did some art commissions for her and this is one of them. She loved test pilots and the "Top Gun" types, and some of her books celebrated this sort of flyer characters. The plane depicted here is the Douglas Skyrocket, an early supersonic jet sponsored and flown by the Navy. I copied the image of the plane from the cover of THE LONELY SKY, a book about test pilots. It is one of the few nametag miniatures that I painted in acrylic paint.

"Douglas Skyrocket" is acrylic on Fabriano paper, 3 1/2" x 2 1/4", spring 1984.

Autumn at Piedmont

I wined on Friday instead of Saturday, and went back to Piedmont winery and vineyards, hidden away in the fancy hunt country of Northern Virginia. Their standout wines are a trio of Chardonnays, one without oak, one with "native yeast" which is the stuff that naturally occurs in their vines and makes fermentation happen. The third is a "Reserve" that is delicate, aged in oak for a longer time than the others. I sat inside the tasting room and sipped Reserve and drew this scene on my iPad. The pyramidal building is a corn crib (storage bin) which is on the property but currently unused.

Drawn on the iPad, "Autodesk Sketchbook Pro," October 14, 2011. Some touchups were done in Photoshop.