Illustration Friday – Caution

i fantasmi della fenditura del Cigno

A sketch for the illustrated Italian reissue of Ugo Litorina’s 1972 imaginary novel, Ghosts of the Cygnus Rift. Still not quite up to speed on how I used to do rockets…but, getting there, even if it’s slow.

Illustration Friday – Modify

A futuristic picture from a discount bodymod shop on the Moon…or maybe it’s under a dome at Spaceland, that sprawling orbital suburb in Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man. It’s mostly his fault, after all, that my head’s ever full of weird outer space imagery. Some of which is in fact pretty dated…but still pretty fun, nonetheless.

Dead Bat

Snake in the House

Lately, I’ve had zero ideas for new drawings, so I decided to start illustrating whatever shows up in the “search terms” box on my dashboard, since the search terms always contain a lot of great random phrases to think up pictures for. Anyway, a few weeks back, somebody landed on my blog after looking for “snake molas.” So, since I love molas and also sort of like snakes, I did this thing down below. It’s not, of course, a real mola, since a real one’s the product of a lot of hard and genius-level work, while this drawing was all done pretty quick in Flash and my level’s definitely amateur.

Eden

Somehow, I was able to pass a giant scary test in American Literature earlier today. So that’s good, I guess. Now I can forget every single thing I ever knew about any book ever published in the United States. Which is nice, ’cause I love forgetting stuff. First, I’m gonna forget all about James Fenimore Cooper, then I’m gonna work on forgetting Edith Wharton. Although, I guess I could hold on to a couple of warm old book memories for just a little while longer…like, I’ll wait a week or two before I purge my Cordwainer Smith files. And, well, all right, I’ll admit I don’t want to completely disremember Doc Smith, ’cause there’s something counter-intuitively glorious about awful prose.

Meanwhile, to celebrate, here’s more pointless art, which I did this afternoon instead of doing what I was supposed to do, which was yet more school-related stuff. (Does all this endless schoolwork ever lead anywhere?)

Anyhow, this book cover is, of course, done in a style that’s so un-fashionable, there’s not even half a chance it’ll be fashionable again, even in an ironic way. But, whatever, it’s fun to pretend they’re gonna reissue these books with weird retro covers. Not that this drawing’s a huge success…but, I’m still re-learning how to even draw at all, so I’m gonna leave it alone how it is and move on to other things.

Solaris

This is kind of a waste of time, but at least it’s the fun sort (sort of). Anyway, I got annoyed by the Solaris cover I posted down below, so here’s another version, which I’m sure will annoy me in turn in a week or so. I still kind of wish the space station was down lower, but I needed it where I moved it, for some mysterious reason.

Illustration Friday – Repair

My uncle, the Ham Enthusiast, was always messing around with the innards of all his many, many radios. The things is, I think he mostly kind of un-repaired ‘em instead of fixing ‘em, ’cause not a single one was in working order when he finally flew up to Radio Heaven.

Haircut Chart

When we were in England, my fourth favorite thing (behind taking a walking tour in Bath and having dinner twice at The Old Amalfi in Bloomsbury) was when we saw some handmade haircut charts in the British Museum. Which, ’cause I’m a crummy photographer, and ’cause I’m always nervous a docent’s gonna yell at me for even taking pictures, the picture I’ve got of this particular exhibit’s way too blurry to post, so just go ahead and imagine it. Basically, there were five or six numbered heads on each board, and each head sported a different fancy hairstyle. Anyhow, it was a very cool image, all those kinds of haircuts you could choose from in whatever barber shop in whatever faraway country (somewhere in Africa, I think). I especially loved the random blue border at the bottom of one of the signs and also the fact that a couple of bald guys were featured beside guys with more than the usual amount of pompadour action. (Wasn’t there some kind of similar chart in the Coen Brothers film The Man Who Wasn’t There? Can’t remember now, maybe the barber was just listing hairstyles in his voiceover.) So, anyway, that’s the deal with my drawing, in case it’s not already obvious, which, you never know, maybe it’s not. Of course, the original version’s the best, but maybe I’ll be as good as that anonymous sign painter in about 100 thousand more years.

Illustration Friday – Strings

Seriously, America, beware of crotchety old men who enjoy telling lies and spreading hate and venom and lighting fires under mobs.