Category Archives: Art

From the Deep

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A dear friend of mine set up a paint night. We would get together, have a drink and follow along with a painting tutorial. Much like the parties people pay to go out to, except with a better budget. I was super happy that we were able to do it, but it had been so long since I’d actually just painted for the fun of making a picture I was a bit worried.

I figured having a drink would help that, grabbed my paint brushes and a couple of other bits that might come in handy and headed over.

It’s probably for the best that we didn’t have an actual, live instructor. We were all over the place. Starting, stopping, rewinding. There were questions about what they said and what it meant… but we were all just rolling with it. Our quick tutorial (less than an hour) took us more than two hours to get through!

We all just forged our way forward.

The subject was some sort of eldritch horror rising up from the depths. The starting point was creating the depths… and then we were off and painting! It was a lot of fun, and it helped me to remember that’s what it is supposed to be. Making a painting doesn’t need to be some kind of exercise in perfection. It should be about the process of creation. We all did that. *I* did that, and had a great time with it.

I am definitely out of practice. I should spend more time with my brushes and get some canvases covered. I struggled with my control and my color theory has spent too much time in the world of digital with the ‘undo’ button handy. When I finished I can’t say I was super happy with what I had created, but I was also not disappointed. I was definitely not the best picture that night. I have some crazy talented friends!

I plan to paint more now, and I absolutely hope we all get together again to do another one! Here’s the final result of what I painted:

Werewolf – In Space!

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Of Monsters and MainframesOf Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


At the risk of putting a spoiler right up front…

Space werewolf with a robot arm. That checks a lot of boxes as a friend of mine once said.

This is an interesting look at monster movie stories in space. The author clearly has a lot of all the classics. It would be very easy to see this being converted into a movie. The vision here is quite cinematic.

That being said, there were parts of the story that seemed to lean on the ‘movie magic’ thing. It was hard to tell how big certain things were in the story as described. Either they were multiple sized or changed size or were somehow just right for wherever they were needed.

In all this took time to get into but was really enjoyable! Would recommend.



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This was also a Watch The Skies selection and I couldn’t resist a really fun image for the fanzine cover art:

Rabbits

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Rabbits (Rabbits, #1)Rabbits by Terry Miles

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Really enjoyed this one! A great head bending story.

I was shocked to discover the main character was specifically designed to not have gender identifying aspects. I read the story as if the main character was male, but other members of my book group did not. Turns out that was done with purpose and I think that’s fantastic.

There were a number of places in the story that reminded me of the old movie Time Cop. The person comes back to the “now” and nobody else remembers the “was”. I would enjoy seeing this as a movie or limited series!



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Since this was a selection for Watch The Skies, this is the fanzine cover I created, along with two alternate versions.

There was also one part in the book where a van screeches up to the curb and the door slides open in front of the main character, and all I could think was, “You can’t fool me… I get the candy *first*…”

This was the first alternate:

And this was the second alternate:

Art is still happening…

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Creativity has been hard to come by of late. I’m still struggling. Some of the work I have done is… stuff I’d rather not claim in fact. I don’t like it, but there were deadlines. I *have* been doing little things as I am inspired.

I’m still running the TTRPG Dungeons & Dragons game. There are still videos being posted and all the fun associated with sharing that story with my friends. It has also given me a framework to hang some of my inspiration on. I think this might be the way to rebuild or repair and restart the creation engine.

I have been working through a particular story line and striving to bring just the right words to the players to evoke images and push imaginations forward. Recently I decided to create a picture of an intricate door to accompany my description.

This is the result:

It is no masterpiece, but it IS complete. The first creative endeavor strictly for my own pleasure in quite a long time. Small steps, moving forward. Art can help, and creating things like this has always been part of me. It’s good to be moving that way again.

Cover Piece

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I’m still squeezing in time to do graphic work for Watch The Skies. This was the cover of the July fanzine. Normally I go for some kind of image inspired directly from the work, but I hadn’t gotten far enough by the deadline, so I worked to come up with something more abstract.

Sketching

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I’ve wandered away from the keyboard again. I’m currently working on in a sketchbook. There’s something wonderfully satisfying about being able to see the blank page and add pencil to that. The shading, the subtlety of different lead weights, watching the pattern of the paper as the pencil rubs off across it.

The blank page here isn’t the same as a blank typing page. The daunting task of filling a page with words is far different than the waiting paper, reaching out for linework and shading or stipples or even watercolors. Typing also doesn’t give the same visceral satisfaction of hand motion. The alternation of pressure on the keys makes no difference to anything except when I need to purchase a new keyboard because I’ve smashed a button too hard or cracked another support leg.

I don’t know if the “art” or any of the sketching I do right now will ever make it here. Sometimes there are things just for me. Sometimes I’ll share them with friends or around the game table – but the internet probably doesn’t get any of what I’m doing now and there’s a satisfaction to that.

I’m sure there will be more soon – until then, back to the pencils.

Process and Choices

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Along with writing, running games and creating stories I still create art. Well ‘art’ is a strong word, but I still make covers for Watch The Skies. At this point I know I’ve done more than 200 different pieces. Working and reworking those covers is a process. I’ve gotten a lot better and a lot faster at the process over time, but there are still a series of choices that have to be made each time. Sometimes I create options for the covers that never see the light of day. This month was an example of my method and I thought it would be a good idea to post up a couple of the options just for the sake of seeing the process. 

 When I’m working with photos in particular for any of the things that I’m creating, I often will use various filters through the computer to make these pictures look more seamless than they really are after I’ve compiled all the pieces. I know that using filters isn’t necessarily the same as drawing and/or painting with color to create the same effect, but given a shortened time frame the computerized tools are generally the option I need to go with.

 Here are a couple of alternates that I created for this month’s cover of our Fanzine.

Copies for each variation. I'm still partial to the neon in the bottom left corner.

Hopefully seeing these variations and knowing that there were other covers, other pieces that were attempted and discarded would help anyone who’s looking at the process of others in order to inform their own working steps. Creating a draft for writing is essentially the same thing. Computers are fantastic for copies. You have the ability to create a thing, then take that base and start again in a different direction. Running multiple iterations until you find the one that you think will work can be a long process. I think that could be an interesting discussion topic actually – how many iterations of a thing are you comfortable with before you put it out where the public can see it?

Still Making Art

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A lot of what I’ve done in the recent past has been more illustration or collage, but I am still working on making art. It’s taking time to get the creative battery charged up, but it’s going.

This piece was inspired by an AI driven teddy bear nanny bot using a mini-gun in a recent Watch The Skies book selection. It was originally published in Watch The Skies, the January 2025 edition.

Inspiration

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I am a very visual person. I LOVE to page through, read and take inspiration from art books. I can’t say that I’m a collector or a connoisseur, but I just have to dig into them. They routinely provide inspiration for me to work on things of various natures. Sometimes they inspire frustration because I’m not as good as a professional, but intellectually I understand – that’s why they’re the pros.

Images like the one pictured here (all credit to John Harris) have seeped into my mind. They’ve snuck into the cracks and crannies and lived there without me realizing it for my whole life. I have a story (unpublished) where I actually have something similar to the image above as part of the story. Totally unconscious choice. The artist’s work exists in the background all the time in my head – I just don’t often see as direct a translation as this.

I have other art books that I will likely go back and dig into now, just to revisit them and see if there are other bits that have snuck into my work. Until I get back to those, here is my review from over on Goodreads.

The Art of John Harris: Beyond the Horizon by John Harris

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This rating should really be more like 4.5 stars. Reading a book like this with all the amazing images accompanying the work is a genuine pleasure.

I hadn’t realized how deep these images had settled into my mind until I read this book. The works are definitely “bookstore iconic” as Mr. Scalzi says in his foreward. Seeing the scale and scope of what the artist created and then recognizing any number of these works from books currently residing on my shelf really brought home how good this art is.

Another aspect is the opportunity to read what the artist was thinking while creating these works. His story that went along with various images was great to read.

IF you’re a fan of science fiction art, this is a worth addition to your collection.



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Cover Me

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I spent my evening at the monthly meeting of my local science fiction (and fantasy) fan/reading group tonight. We’re about to wrap up our 26th? year. We’ve been at it a long time. One of the things we’ve been doing during that time is creating a monthly fanzine.

There was a time when I was very bitter that we were clearly eligible for winning a Hugo award in the fanzine category and could never gain any traction, even with our own members. That eventually slid into disappointment more than bitterness, and then into happiness that we weren’t tied to scandals and terrible nonsense.

These days, we keep creating the fanzine because it’s a small thing that brings us joy. A few dozen ‘subscribers’ and a way to get some relatable content out to our friends. Yes, we’re still eligible to win a Hugo but I’m no longer certain it’s a thing we would want.

Jeff dug up some physical copies of old covers. For many years we had an actual, printed paper copy to hand out live and in person to anyone showing up for the meeting. These old pages showed me a variety of the kind of artwork I’ve done over the years. A lot of what I saw here was cringeworthy. Some of them I like to this day.

I don’t post as much about my art here these days in part because there’s less of it than there used to be. I just don’t have the same amount of time I did before. There are so many things to do in this world that sometimes I lose track and don’t create as much art as I’d like. Even the cringey stuff. Gotta break some eggs and all that.

I suggest doing art. Create something. Save it if you like OR give it to somebody. Someday it might come back to you so you can see how far you have come.