Art
On this page is presented a small sampling of the drawings and paintings I have done over the years. I have destroyed quite a lot as it tends to look embarrassingly bad after a while, and have very little from before my teenage years.
I used to paint a lot as a teenager, but stopped after that. I never considered going to art school (despite the encouragement of various people) as I never considered myself a “real” artist, so I have never had any formal training (the art classes at school were fairly basic). I am reasonably good at copying things (mainly photos), but not at doing my own original work. I can’t do abstract art (though I can admire that of others); my brain doesn’t seem to work that way. I sometimes feel that I am only pretending to be creative! Perhaps I am not, really, and am just an imposter.
Art was the ONLY thing I got any admiration for from my classmates at school. I was hopeless at sport and my grades were average, or below-average. I could draw better than anyone in my grade year, and, as I was not popular, this was the only thing I could gain some respect for.
I seem to mainly like drawing people and the human figure, though doing faces is difficult (i.e. getting a convincing likeness). I prefer drawing small; all the art I have done from my late teens onward is on A4- or A5-sized paper. I also seem to prefer drawing to painting (quicker and less messy).
Too often when doing a drawing I would find some fault in it, then re-do it, then find more faults, then re-do it again until I got sick of the whole thing and destroyed it!
I have done very little drawing since I began my website; mainly in the form of occasional cartoons. I have gone for years without doing any art, then I’ll spend a few months doing a whole lot (the last period of drawing was 2000-2001). I have done a few tentative pencil drawings for my “Star Warrior” story. I would like to resume painting again “one day”, but so far have not found the will to start!
Cartoons
I do have a sense of humor (surprisingly!). Some cartoons, mostly spaceflight-related:
- Engine blender, 27 December 1999 (40 KB). Why standing near a jet engine is a bad idea.
- Canned meat, 24 April 2004 (41 KB). Some cosmonauts just landed are greeted by some unwelcome visitors.
- Over the Moon, 26 April 2004 (38 KB). Someone in the Soyuz crew is a bad navigator.
- Shark bait, 28 May 2004 (35 KB). Yet more hapless cosmonauts have an unwelcome encounter during ocean survival training.
- Daisuke dress-up, 15 March 2006 (71 KB). An imagined crew portrait: would-be spaceflight participant Daisuke Enomoto wanted to dress up as an animé character called Char Aznable. (His ISS-14 crewmates aren’t impressed.)
- Orbit insertion, 31 October 2006 (47 KB). Alternate interpretation of the phrase. Furthering international relations.
- Crispy critters, 15 November 2007 (54 KB). Another unfortunate Soyuz landing.
Drawings
A sketch of two stallions fighting, done perhaps in 1980 or 1981 in an exercise book, with particular attention paid to rendering their gruesome injuries! The largest sketch was copied from one in a Walter Farley novel, one in The Island Stallion series. They are fighting near a cliff edge and one falls over and is impaled on the jagged rocks below.
Other side of the horse fight sketch, featuring horses with more gruesome injuries! One is a sort of metallic robot horse.
I sent this pencil sketch to Hoofs and Horns magazine (copied from a photo), and it appeared in the Young Readers Senior Section of the July 1983 edition. The original wasn’t returned, so this reproduction is all I have. There was a curious postscript to the publication of the drawing: a man who bred Arabian horses rang to ask if he could see the original photo as he was interested in the harness design, so I borrowed the book from the school library and he came around to our house one evening to photograph it!
Orbital departure lounge, pencil, 1984. I copied this from a Jim Burns painting published in the now-defunct Omni magazine (which I loved as a teenager; some of the sci-fi stories published there made an impression). It was drawn on thin paper with a lead pencil, and didn’t scan very well. I like his artwork as it is photorealistic.
Horse’s head. Dewent colored pencils, 8 December 1990. I found the horse’s green eyes fascinatingly unusual. Can’t remember the photo I copied it from, though!
“Tutenkhamun’s mask”. COPIIC colored artist’s markers, 15 August 1995.
X-15 rocketplane pilot. Lead pencil sketch, 8 June 2000.
F-4 Phantom pilot. Lead pencil sketch, 22 August 2000.
NF-104 Starfighter pilot, a female who looks remarkably like the site author (*embarrassed cough*). Lead pencil sketch, 30 September 2000.
NASA T-38 pilot. Lead pencil sketch, 16 January 2001.
Mir tribute. Derwent colored pencils, 4 April 2001.
One of my cosmonaut characters, Sergei, in his cabin, каюта (kayuta). Lead pencil, 17 December 2001.
“Black magic”: A quick sketch I did one evening (used myself as a model!). Lead pencil, 17 March 2002.
My other cosmonaut character, Yurii, stares rather glumly out the Lab window onboard the ISS. 12 April 2002.
Paintings
I did a lot of painting during my teenage years. The larger ones were done on canvas-board, and are a bit less than 1 m in size, so I had to take a photo of each.
“Star Warrior”, acrylics, 1986. A (rather androgynous) lady in a starship looks out at the Orion Nebula.
“Journey to the Ice Mountains”, acrylics, 1986. A U-Boat.
“Duel”, oils, 1987. An encounter between an SR-71 Blackbird YF-12 and a MiG-25 Foxbat (I can’t remember what photo I used as reference for the jets – the black jet is actually a YF-12, not an SR-71 Blackbird as I intended – thanks Marcelo for pointing that out!). I was rather pleased with how the clouds turned out! (The painting has become somewhat stained, though.)
B-1B Lancer or “Bone” strategic bomber being refuelled, 1987. Acrylic painting, A-4 sized. I stuck this on the back of one of my school folders and covered it with adhesive Contact, so it is a bit wrecked.
“Cloud Warriors”, acrylics, 1987. A 93 x 60 cm painting I did in 1987 for a school art class project. Top Gun came out the year before, a movie I liked then, so this influenced my painting. It won first prize for the Year 11 section and overall outstanding exhibit in the annual school exhibition – my sole triumph in my otherwise dismal performance at school! I have not painted since, though. (It does not display very well in the photo.)
Ballet dancer, 1990. Small watercolor.