Blade Runner Blues painting, version 1.0

After months of imagining myself making a painting for one of my favorite movies of all time, I finally grabbed a 2 x 4ft canvas that I had prepared with shades of blues about a year ago and dropped these cartoony caricatures on it. A local event, Cinema Tekka needed some art, so I cranked this out in about a day's time. This is actually a picture of it before completion. You can still see the pencil marks all across it. 

The major changes being Joanna Cassidy's Zhora character, in which case lightening her eyes did wonders to her. And I added a "spinner", the flying police car from the film over Deckard's head. 

I'll be posting a better picture of the finished thing hopefully later today. I had to rush it to the venue where it was displayed and getting a good picture of it was difficult.

Pan, lord of the wild

I had mentioned that I also create images with mythic themes and here's the first of MANY I've made over the years. A slight deviation from so much of the Sci-fi related stuff I've been posting as of late. I'm sure Pan needs little introduction. As usual the image at left is reduced to 12% of the original and the detail image at right is reduced to 25%. So these previews are TINY! Enjoy.

Pan

Pencil, Adobe Photoshop

August 2012

Star Trek Art: A Vulcan Child

In the third film, The Search for Spock, the crew of the U.S.S. Grissom are surprised to find the recently departed Captain Spock fully revived and regenerated by the powerful life-giving forces of Project Genesis. Even more surprising is that his newly formed body is that of a young boy. While we never actually saw him 'sitting' on the photon torpedo he was entombed in, I figured it would make a really cute image. The image at left is reduced to 12%. The detail image is 25% smaller than the original.

A Vulcan Child

Pencil, Adobe Photoshop

June 2012

To Touch the Creator

My newest piece based on the dramatic (and slightly confusing) climactic ending of 1979's Star Trek the Motion Picture. It depicts the reconstructed mechanical form of lieutenant Ilia, was played by stunningly beautiful and late actress Persis Khambatta. She is joined by Stephen Collins who played the character of commander Willard Decker. I made two color versions, one with the Enterprise in a light white-gray and the other in Gold as an homage to an early publicity shot of the ship in metallic yellow

To Touch the Creator

Pencil, Photoshop

August 2012

To Touch the Creator, Gold

Pencil, Photoshop

August 2012

My second image for Green room's Rocky Horror Picture Show tribute

Fort Lauderdale's Green Room goes underground on Friday nights. This weekend the theme is a tribute to 1975's Rocky Horror Picture Show. A few local artists are exhibiting and this is one of my two pieces that will be on display. Both images are reduced by roughly 25% from the original.

Return to Transylvania

Pencil, Adobe Photoshop

July 2012

Anatomy of a Cartoon Starship Part CUATRO

As I mentioned earlier, while it's not required, symmetry works with industrial or mechanical designs, like spaceships for example. After duplicating the "warp nacelles" or engines, rectangular guides are laid out on separate layers to help balance the two sides.

I didn't like the handwritten call letters I started with, so I opted for photoshop fonts. In the case of this particular whimsical cartoon rendition, I felt the giant letters looked appropriate.

Anatomy of a Cartoon Starship Part SAN

I'll honestly admit without hesitation that I'll use the computer to fix certain areas that require "perfectly smooth" lines, like the sensor bands running around the saucer. At a certain point, rectangular layers provide visual guides to help maintain symmetry, which I think is important for this kind of project.

The addition of the warp nacelle sketch on the left starts making this design more recognizable.

Anatomy of a Cartoon Starship Part DEUX

This next step makes one imagine I'm crafting a really ugly image but it demonstrates a process that helps tremendously when making something like this. While I wouldn't do this for every illustration I create, in this case duplicating and flipping selected elements makes mechanical objects (like spaceships) more symmetrical.

Anatomy of a Cartoon Starship Part ONE

As some of you already know, I'm a huge Sci-Fi geek. Primarily "vintage" Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Doctor Who, to list only a few. While some artists might work in such realms as the bizarre, others the violent, some the shocking and yet others the abstract, I try to stay in the realm of "cute" (at least half the time). So a lot of my recent sci-fi homages have been "cute-ified" to some degree.

Anyhow I want to share with you the "construction" of a cartoon-ified Starship Enterprise. To begin I started by sketching certain parts of the Enterprise that I later merge with other parts recycled from scans of my cartoon Reliant. Both are very similar so it works, me thinks.