WARREN PIECES: ART GALLERY ONE

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NORDLEY'S  STARSHIP

My current Welcome page shows Gerald D. Nordley's innovative proposed starship concept in this unpublished view based upon his story, "Vertex", which is slated for the September 2007 issue of ANALOG. Dr. Nordley asked me to create this particular image, which I did, but the actual illustration in the magazine is different. "Vertex" marks the fifth (and presumably final) installment in his and C. Sanford Lowe's "Black Hole Project" series: good hard science fiction with oodles of adventure, intrigue, really *bad* bad guys, and some staggering concepts of scale and engineering. I am honored to have been assigned all five installments to illustrate. Thanks, Stan!

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APHELION 1 AND 2 APPROACH  MARS

I produced this piece as a cover for Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction, and they published it for their April issue. Of course, it didn't hurt my chances that I named the two spacecraft after their fine zine... check it out at         www.aphelion.com

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STEPPIN' OUT

Still my personal favorite piece in any medium, "Steppin' Out" painted herself one night ... literally. I didn't come up for air until I realized she was finished, and only then did I realize it was daylight. Time from start to finish: about 7 hours, approx. 15"x25", opaque watercolor (gouache).  I missed SCTV first-run from Canada that night and didn't even care, I was so blissfully zoned out. And to think, it all started because I bought a brand new toy, my first fan brush, and wanted to play with hair in a bubble in zero-gee! I grabbed a magazine page off my scrap pile (I believe, and I'm not kidding, it was a black and white feminine hygiene product advertisement involving playing leapfrog) and made my first stroke on a piece of discarded matte board (acid-neutral, but if I recall it had a coffee-cup ring in the upper right hand corner) and something happened ... She took the brush away from me and ran off laughing, and I never saw her again until she was finished. I have been transported by the rapture of alpha-waves and creativity before and since, but never so thoroughly, nor with such satisfactory results.

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"MY GOD, IT'S FULL OF STARS..."

Opaque Watercolor and Prismacolor Pencil (a marriage made in heaven), approximately 20"x30". The color balance on this copy is really bad, I'll replace it as soon as I get a better shot or locate the original 4x5" negative.

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QUAESTIONES  SUPER  CAELO  ET  MUNDO

My Latin is a bit rusty, but I believe the English translation is "Big Questions About Heaven And Earth" ... this was my *rough sketch* for my illustration for the Richard A. Lovett story by the same name that appeared in the Jul/Aug '07 issue of ANALOG. It's important to note that there is not a single thing in this still life of  Medieval artifacts that's "real" ... although they are based upon real objects. The image was conceived, realized, and completely created in 3DS-MAX. There was no Photoshop retouching (although I did build the texture, bump, opacity and displacement maps in Photoshop.) This is the finished render, straight out of MAX. No "canned" objects, only two texture (color) maps that I did not create by hand: a legitimate medieval tryptych for the scroll, and a photo of old rough wood for the tabletop.  In the '80's I would have used this for a rough sketch (which this is, by the way) and it would have taken more than a month to create an image of this definition. This piece took about 72 hours to realize (not counting the extensive research and planning, learning what Medieval science and technology were actually capable of, and finding examples of art and tools created in that time period.)   The final render occupied perhaps ten minutes of that time. Sorta anticlimactic after all that work, but a very long and nerve-wracking ten minutes. And, ultimately, gratifying. It reminds me of a line worthy of Groucho, but it was probably just a clever wag at a greeting card company: "This (piece of art, card, collectible item, gift, etc.) has never been touched by human hands, which should give you a pretty good idea who it came from." But for those of you out there who claim that computer art isn't really "art", I offer this as an argument to the contrary.

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DRAGON  FAUX-SCRATCHBOARD

My buddy Dragon Dronet is a major mover and shaker in Hollywood, he and his wife own a special effects house called "Renegade Effects" (www.renegadeeffects.com) and while you've seen him in many films (or his handiwork) you probably never recognized him ... he's usually a Klingon, or a Giant Robot, or a Martial Arts Master in layers of armor, which he builds himself using traditional Armorer's techniques. Visit his website ... he has the coolest job in the world!  And he was my first experiment with a Photoshop plug-in I actually liked enough to *BUY*, it's called "India Ink" from an outfit with the unlikely name "Flaming Pear" -- but I really like some of the stuff it does. It's a steal at 15.00USD, and they also offer awesome freebies.  www.flamingpear.com Source photo: www.MisCon.org

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QUITTIN' TIME

Most people familiar with my work claim that this is the best piece I ever did, and I will admit she's high on my list of favorites, but I still like "Steppin' Out" best. This piece marked a milestone for me, though ... I taught Kelly Freas something for the first time! Didn't come anywhere close to paying him back for all the stuff he taught me over the years, but it felt wonderful! The piece is almost 100% airbrushed acrylic (using an old Badger 150XF, if you can imagine!) and she's  approximately 20"x30" on Letramax Hot-Press board.

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FRANK  GASPERIK'S  RELIQUARY

My ol' filking and drinking buddy, Frank Gasperik, lost his beloved wife Peggy in October of 2006 and got - er -pretty glum for a while. He asked me in about mid-November to do him a favor ... he wanted me to make a sculpture for him with his mortal ashes mixed into the clay. "I want King Kong on top of the Empire State Building with a clock in his stomach!" he decreed.  Further, he wanted it shipped to the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society for them to display in their clubhouse and wanted the placque to refer to their motto: "Pay your dues! Death will not release you!" Well, I did a comical and very irreverent version of the thing that snapped him out of his doldrums, and he bounced back into fanac (fannish activity) for a while. But health problems, stress, and eventually a heart attack finally brought him down this year. As I write this, on June 21, 2007, his mortal remains were interred yesterday with full military honors, followed by what I'm sure must have been a wake for the ages at Liam's Irish Pub. All, that is, except for a cigar tube's worth of his ashes. He had been talking about this statue ever since he asked me to do it, and all of Science Fiction fandom apparently knew of his plan, but didn't know who was supposed to do the deed. I didn't know that, so rather expected to meet with righteous indignation when I stepped forward and said, "This is going to sound weird, but Frank wanted me to do this sculpture of King Kong with some of his ashes ..." Well, the piece was already legendary from Frank's telling the tale, and in a surprisingly short time the cigar tube arrived on my doorstep.  So I redesigned the piece in Poser 5 to more accurately portray the sculpture he described to me, and I am in the process of building it now. This is a rendered 3D image that shows pretty closely how the final piece will look (only he'll be a black silverback, not brown), and I will devote a page to this project as both the sculpture and the website develop. But for now, this is the plan for Frank Gasperik's Reliquary. "Ya picked a bad time to leave us, Frank G! "We miss your bright smile, your guitar on your knee! "We've seen some bad cons you turned into good ones, "You had the crowds singing with glee! "Ya picked a bad time to leave us, Frank G!" Long may he roar! There is a separate page dedicated to the detailed history and construction of this piece of artwork here.

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"IT'S JUST A PROP!"

My buddy Dragon again (and yes, that is his *real* name), in a cartoon version I created in a couple of hours with gouache and Prismacolor. He was working for Stargate Films at the time, and I lampooned him for not being his own boss. I did this at the insistence of my wife, who had a panel at an art show she didn't have enough work to fill. I tried to talk her out of it, I knew it was a *BAD IDEA*, but she kept insisting and persisting that I do a piece to fill up that hole. I finally relented, "let" this, and off it went. You can already guess the result: this was the only piece on the panel that sold, PLUS (just to throw salt in the wound) what came back in its place was the award for "Best Humor", which she had been confident she would win. Needless to say, marital bliss was forever after a thing of the past...

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ADA  WILKINS, ONLINE  DURING  DOWNTIME

The story break illustration from the John Brunner yarn of the same name, back when ANALOG would run story break illustrations in longer works. That's my daughter Roo in the foreground as the stone angel on a monument, with buddies Vampire Joe and Phydeaux as the investigator and gravedigger, respectively. This piece shows some of the playful  spirit I was enjoying in those days: I would hide my name in the illustration somewhere rather than sign the piece. It was a trick I learned from Michael Whelan: "If you sign your art in the lower right hand corner, some clever art director will see to it that it's cropped out or covered with type or a UPC symbol. That's why I invented my 'M / W' crest: it's innocuous enough not to interfere with the art and no matter how clever the AD is, it's almost impossible to obscure."   The headstone behind Phydeaux reads (you guessed it!) "WARREN". Pencil and ink, 12x18"