Star Seeds

They may be seeds, or they may be eggs, but whatever they are, they are just about ready to hatch, or bloom. These fresh new stars have dissipated most of the nebula gas and dust which was the garden of their birth, and now are ready to shine forth in a close bright cluster of radiant flowers in a cosmic springtime. The usual, October 1990.

"Art By-Products" is going to be on an "away from studio" schedule while I travel to Massachusetts to celebrate my father's 90th birthday. I might be able to post something, if I draw it and can photograph it well enough to show up on the web. Anyway, no nebulas for a while.

Venus and Taurus

A friend of mine wants to commission me to do a mythological piece on the theme of "Venus and Taurus." The idea was to depict the Goddess of Love and Beauty calming a raging bull. These figures are linked in classical astrology which is a factor in the commission assignment as well. We in the Northern Hemisphere are currently in the sign of Taurus, which is ruled by the planet Venus, bright in our evening skies.

I showed this digital sketch to my friend/client tonight and though he enjoyed it, it was definitely not what he wanted. He showed me another picture entirely - of football action! to show what he wanted. His Venus and Taurus are engaged in a much more aggressive way, with the bull charging like a tackler against an opponent holding the ball. The mood is more like bullfighting than football, though instead of murdering the bull, Venus will tame him with bravery and Love. So I'm back to the drawing screen, but not for a while as I will be out of the studio for a week or so.

Red Smoke

You saw "Purple Haze," now here's "Red Smoke." Don't believe the color, either here or in the garish nebula pictures that you see from Hubble or other telescopes. Some scientist has been busy enhancing the colors so that the pix will be sexy. Didn't think space could be sexy? In America anything can be sexy, if you need to market it. Is that nebula one of space's Red Light Districts? Are there nebula nude starlets waiting for you in a cosmic bordello? Get astrophysical with these hotties.

"Red Smoke" is acrylic on illustration board, 7" x 10", October 1990.

Purple Haze

Believe me, this is not about Jimi Hendrix. It's another of my attempts to make a slightly larger nebula picture. My airbrush and paint mix has always resulted in a slight granular texture, which shows more in the little pieces than in a larger one, since you look at the smaller area more closely. If I had spent more money and gotten a finer airbrush, I would have been able to spray paint with a photographic smoothness. Now all I have to do is use the "Airbrush" tool in Photoshop.

"Purple Haze" is acrylic on illustration board, 14" x 20", October 1990.

The White Eagle

This is one of my favorite paintings I ever did, even though it's now 24 years old. It's from a forgotten book by a forgotten author: "The Secret Power" by British author Marie Corelli. I have been a Corelli fan ever since I found one of her extravagant fantasy novels in a used book sale back in the 1960s. "The Secret Power" was published in 1921. Corelli was very popular during her lifetime (she lived from 1855-1924) and I have most of her published works.

She was a science fiction writer before the genre had been invented, and she wrote thrilling fantasy back in the 1880s and 1890s. I have illustrated many a fantasy scene from her work, but this is the only one I did from her science fiction tales. The character depicted is named "Morgana Royal," and she is a tiny girl with dazzling golden hair that reaches almost to her knees. She is impossibly rich (the heiress daughter of an Andrew Carnegie analog) and impossibly brilliant, an engineer and inventor who has designed an ornithopter airship, the "White Eagle." She almost always dresses in white (as did Marie Corelli herself) and she wears a snow-white flight suit decorated with diamonds. Morgana is quite a tease, but she rejects the advances of numerous men smitten with her. She is in search of a mythical, mystical "Golden City" where a race of super-people (who look like her) are hidden somewhere in the Middle East.

As far as I know, I am the only modern fan of Marie Corelli. In her day, Queen Victoria loved her work. Corelli also was quite "racy" for her time, with plenty of erotic energy in her characters and storylines. Her lavish descriptions make her works an illustrator's dream. I sold this painting to a couple of fans who didn't know anything about Corelli or the book, they just loved the colors and the character.

I never thought I'd see Victoriana become science fiction, but now in the era of "Steampunk" I see lots of things that tempt me to revisit Marie Corelli and her works of fantastic and occult fiction. Is it legitimate to return to the stuff that inspired you when you didn't know any better?

"Morgana and the White Eagle" is acrylic on illustration board, 13" x 22", February 1986.

Death's Master

I used to be a big fan of Tanith Lee's books. They were published, in the USA, by DAW Books, which I did some covers for back in the early 80s. Tanith Lee is still alive and writing her baroque, erotic horror-fantasies, but I haven't read anything by her in almost 30 years. When I was just starting as a professional, I hoped that I would be able to do covers for her books so I painted this one as a practice. It's from "Night's Master," which was published in 1978 (with a cover by George Barr). The convoluted storyline involved a hermaphroditic hero, a blue demon named Azhrarn, and Death (here in white, seen from the back).

Again you see my bad figure drawing which has barely improved since I painted this picture in the distant past. There is hope for me though since I have recently acquired a figure drawing course on DVD's for my home study. I never give up hope that I could draw fantasy people figures. I still want to paint things like this, except in digital media. I am really an amateur again, I can't call myself a professional artist right now.

Back then I didn't worry about my "legacy to the world." I just painted illustrations from books I read, hoping to become an Illustrator. Now I want to leave a body of Original Serious Art, not cheesy illustration, for the world to remember me by. The trouble is that I don't have any fun doing Serious Art. Can you do Serious Art in a digital medium? I really like what George Barr says on his site and wouldn't mind having that attitude, but I am too Serious. I've always liked George Barr's art. Maybe I'll re-read some of my dusty old Tanith Lee books.

"Death's Master" is acrylic on Masonite, approximately 11" x 18", February 1981.

Asteroid Barbecue

For the last two posts I've brought you pictures of the terrible earthquake that leveled the city of Eridu. Here's a whole planet breaking up! Well, at least it's not a life-bearing planet with an atmosphere and living things to perish by the billions. This is the kind of stuff that happened for millions of years during the early times of our solar system (and countless others). Roundish planetoids would form from dust and accreted rocky matter. They would get larger by collecting more stuff by gravity. Then some other rocky lump would smack into them and bust them back into loose gravel again. All of this happened in a hot, harsh environment with lots of spilling magma. After a while, the planetoids got big enough to absorb the debris in their areas and clear out a space for themselves. All those craters on the planet and moon pictures you see come from a time like this, when planets were bombarded by rocks and barbecued by heat and radiation. It must have been fun to watch.

"Asteroid Barbecue" is acrylic on illustration board, 10" x 7", October 1990.