Fifty West Vineyard View

"Wine Saturday" brought me and the Wine Team to "Fifty West Vineyards" near the picturesque town of Aldie, Virginia. The spring leaves are brightening up and soon the grapevines will leaf out as well. There is plenty of that radiant Spring yellow-green, even on a partly cloudy day. This is a view of one of their newly planted vineyard areas. In the front are old vine posts with party lights suspended from them. The reddish places on the ground are fresh dirt where vines are growing. That is the color of most of the dirt I've seen in Virginia, and I hope it continues to foster the Grape.

Ink and colored pencil on sketchbook page, 8" x 7 1/2". Started on site and finished in the studio. April 28-29, 2018.

Author Portrait

I don't often do portraits in simple tech pen, but this friend of mine was willing to stay still for enough time to do the work. She was a science fiction author who had recently moved to Washington, DC with her husband and I was visiting them in early 1982 during the holiday season. I have lots of author friends and this one and I enjoyed making stuff up together, some of which would later be incorporated in her writing. I learned the craft of "world-building" from this person, which would later enable me to create "authentic" graphic novel images and illustrations. After some mishaps in DC she and her husband decided to seek their fortune elsewhere and our ways diverged. One of the things I remember about her was her fashions, note the "zig-zag" glasses. I also designed some tattoos for her, which I guess are still there with her.

Black tech pen on sketchbook page, 4" x 4 1/2", January 2, 1982.

Upscale Coffee Shop

The "Ladies of Craft" met at the elegant Greenberry's Coffee Shop in affluent McLean, Virginia on Friday. I have drawn Greenberry's and its people over the years and it is always a pleasant place to go, with top quality snacks and pastries. I enjoy drawing the patterns made by furniture and windows. I'm glad to be upscale, at least for an hour or two.

Sepia tech pen on sketchbook page, color added in Photoshop, 4 1/2" x 4 1/2", April 27, 2018.

Spring Sky

You may remember that my art theme for 2018 is "Skies." When it's night time and rainy, the sky portrait is all black with street lights. Or all black nothing else, if you're out there in the wet countryside, and why would you go there at night anyway. This is a spring sky about 6 PM, with the bright yellow-green leaves under it just starting to open up. All of this is from memory, so I don't have to include the Taco Bell and Sunoco signs.

Markers, colored pencils on sketchbook page, and a bit of Photoshop, 6" x 4", April 27, 2018.

642: a kebab

I haven't visited the prompt pages of "642" recently, so I took a draw. The prompt for this one was "a kebab" and you know I love my Persian food. But this kebab is made of roast planets, suitable for Marvel Comics' planet-eating cosmic giant, Galactus. I believe in Pluto but just for the scientific types I'm carefully labeling it "Dwarf Planet." Sizes of the planets are not to true scale. You can see Mars, Earth, Venus, and Mercury on a smaller kebab skewer. As the Persians say, "Nooshi jaan" or "Bon Appetit."

Black tech pen on sketchbook 642 page, 3 1/2" x 9", April 25, 2018.

Gang of Monks

Alexandria, Egypt in later Roman imperial times was not a quiet or safe city. The streets were filled with people of all ethnicities and classes, with crimes everywhere. Christian and Jewish and Pagan religious factions fought it out in the street, often with the most primitive weapons of sticks, clubs, stones, and roof tiles. Competing bishops commanded gangs of monks to protect them, and the monks were not above joining in the melee. Here we see a bishop, Theophilus, commanding his militia of monks who stand ready to fight those who do not agree with their version of Christ's teachings.

Sepia ink with watercolor and Photoshop touch up, 5 1/2" x 9", 1974. Illustration from my Roman historical fantasy. Click for larger view.

Alien Natives Orgy

This is one of the latest ones I did in the Gregg Press collector's item edition of Darkover books. The tale it illustrates is a familiar one: human re-colonizers arrive to re-settle Darkover for themselves, despite the resistance of native sentient species. This one spends a lot of time on the chieri, the seven-foot-tall hermaphroditic natives who can interbreed with humans and produce psychically gifted children. The, uh, climax of the book involves a mass orgy of humans and chieri, thus re-vitalizing the genetic heritage of both species. You can see the ecstatic chieri at the top of the pile.

The author Marion liked this picture so much that she reserved it for herself in the art show and took it home. I wonder what happened to all that art that MZB either bought for herself or received as gifts. I think they gave some pieces back to me and they are stashed in a closet with all the fan zines I illustrated.

Ink and photostat, 7" x 10", April 1979. Click for chieri view.