Tower of Fantasy

In the mid-1990s, which still seems like the future for me but is astonishingly almost 20 years ago, I did private illustration work for an engineer/inventor who had a fantasy world he wanted to bring to artistic life. He had an elaborate set of plans and ideas for a futuristic utopian community which would integrate science, psychology, design, adventure, and biology, as well as the old-fashioned hippie virtues of communalism, ecological sensitivity, nudity, and free love. The whole world was called "Kallitechnia," a Greek word that I provided for him, which means "Beautiful Craft work" or more relevantly, "beautiful technology."

He paid me to do a lot of concept art on this project, almost all of it in black and white ink drawings which would reproduce well and not cost too much. I was spared the nudity and free love part, thankfully, and got to design a lot of fantastic Art Nouveau-style architecture based on his suggestions. Eventually he wanted to publish an illustrated imaginary-world book along the lines of James Gurney's "Dinotopia," which in those days was new and very popular.

I did a lot of drawings, and was fairly well-paid for them, but eventually the engineer retired and didn't have as much disposable income, and his interests wandered elsewhere, so this utopian project vanished into the mists. None of my drawings were ever published, and I am not that devoted to publishing something which is not my original idea when I already have my own Noantri world to create and illustrate. This bubble-topped observation tower is from one of the "Kallitechnia" illustration series.

Kallitechnia observation tower is ink on Bristol board, 7" x 10", June 1996.

Biblical Dream Interpreter

My uncle Joseph, who died last November, loved art and bought from both my mother and myself. This one was a commission, to honor his Biblical namesake, the Hebrew Joseph. Bible readers will remember that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers and brought to Egypt. As an adult, Joseph rises into high social circles and is successful in life until he is brought down by a scandalous woman, the wife of his boss. He is thrown into prison for attempted rape but while in prison he distinguishes himself as an interpreter of dreams. His reputation attracts the attention of the Pharaoh, who has Joseph interpret his famous dream of seven fat well-fed cows followed by seven starving cows, and seven ripe good ears of grain followed by seven stunted, withered ears of grain. Joseph interprets this as a portent of seven good weather years to be followed by seven years of drought and want.

My uncle commissioned me to portray the Jewish hero Joseph brought before the Egyptian ruler, declaiming his interpretation of Pharaoh's dream. I depicted the animals and grains as symbols floating in dreamspace, done in a style borrowed from ancient Egyptian wall paintings.

In the Biblical days and even up into modern times, dreams were thought to carry real information about the world and what was to come. Nowadays, the belief in dreams as accurate messages or prophecies has mostly faded away, remaining only among religious enthusiasts.

"Joseph and Pharaoh" is ink and watercolor on Fabriano paper, 10" x 14", fall 1977. This photograph was taken of the art when it was already in its frame and has been rescued from fading and poor imaging, by heroic Photoshop. Click on the pic for a somewhat larger view.

Techno-mite

It is impossible to put something down without picking up something else, which has to be put somewhere else, where something even elser is. Drop it on the floor, then. You are fighting for a cubic foot of space in a set of dusty cubicles where there is no longer space, only pieces and chunks and sheafs of matter, some of which is important and valuable and some of which is not. The important matter, such as bills, clean laundry, and contact information for clients, is scattered in little piles all over the rooms. Get something done! Some of them need to be attended to right away, but you get distracted trying to throw something out. Then you think of that project that was supposed to be progressing, but you can't even see it any more, it is behind other projects that are supposed to be progressing, like the digitization of photographs and tapes and other documents. Despairing of getting anything done, you return to Facebook hoping you will find something new from one of your good friends, but there is nothing there but people passing around old music videos. Back to the room where there is a pile of bills and a bag of dirty laundry. The sink is full of dirty dishes. Get something done. You clean them but then an hour later the sink is filled again because you ate something. You have thousands of books you can't bear to part with. There's one on the shelf now. Time to read it, after 20 years of neglect in your collection. There is an eighth of an inch of dust on the top edge, which you blow off in a cloud of annoyance. The book's open page says, "Get something done." There is dust everywhere, dust on the books, dust on the floor, dust on the windowsill, dust on your collected collectibles. And in all that dust are the mites, millions of them, your little unseen companions. Some of them are equipped with nanotechnological sensors and mini-processors, reporting to the Search Engine that you have not gotten anything done.

Photoshop, "digital ink," about 5" x 5 1/2", January 28, 2012.

Most of a Pin-up Girl

This is as finished as I'm going to go with my first "official" digital nude sketch. The lower legs of this girl were documented earlier, and I didn't feel like combining and attaching them. So she's sitting on a white sheet and covering up her legs or something. I don't want to deprive her of her limbs but she is only a sketch after all. I see many failures in this digital "painting" which will be remedied in later attempts. As for the bikini armor and giant sword, that will be part of subsequent assignments. No one is assigning me but myself, you understand, but I always work better when I have some sort of goal in mind. Later I will even put time limits on my "assignment" to simulate an art school or commercial studio environment. I don't know if I will go so far as to require all-nighters from me just to get the work done on time, but then I'm up all night anyway mostly.

Photoshop, about 8" x 8" (print size).

Five Doctors Who

In the early 80s I hung out with a number of comic book and British TV fans who had ambitions of creating a little media conglomerate in the Boston area. They conceived of a number of semi-pro fan magazines ("zines") which would cover their favorite subjects as well as show off fan fiction. They commissioned me to illustrate lots of interior illustrations, cartoons, and covers for these publications. Among them was this illustration of the five Doctors Who for their British TV fan magazine, "Fantasy Empire." This was my first color cover and I was thrilled. You can see the famous faces of the first five Doctors, in order of appearance in the series: William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, John Pertwee, Tom Baker (my all-time favorite), and Peter Davison. There have been six more Doctors since then but I confess I am not at all familiar with them.

"Fantasy Empire" ran for a few issues, and then faded away as did the rest of this media enterprise. You have to give them credit for their ambition and good intentions, all on paper with ink in a time before blogs, sites, and social media.

"The Five Doctors Who" is ink, watercolor, and gouache on illustration board, 8" x 11", March 1981. Colors extensively restored in Photoshop.

Horse-like Dragon

My latest page of dragon drawings, copied or inspired by Peffer's book, show a traditional Western type of dragon that looks somewhat like a winged horse, with its large quadruped limbs and horselike head. This type of dragon is similar to the Welsh dragon which is on that country's flag. Some artists have created fantasy anatomical drawings of just what a dragon's musculature should look like, based on animal anatomy. There is a dragon's hoard of "information" about these creatures! I have always been ashamed of liking dragons because they are too large and fierce for what I am supposed to be, which is some sort of service provider. But I do enjoy them! There are many species and the horse-like "Welsh" dragon is only one of them.

Dragon studies are pencil, 11" x 8 1/2", January 25, 2012.

More Body Rendering

I did the digital rendering of the torso and thighs on this study. It's crude and simple and I will have to make lots more of these before I am confident enough to make a pin-up. I still have the face and hand to do, and after that I'll move on to another figure pose. I just do a little every day, it's better than nothing. Photoshop as usual, 5 layers. If I use more than about 4 layers, I forget what is on which layer, which happened here. I don't know how they keep track of those huge multi-layer renderings.