Skip to main content

[break.]


17" x 11", watercolour, 1994


I am a HUGE fan of science fiction and, ever since I was a young child, looking at the conceptual art for and other visuals of the Star Wars and other sci-fi films, TV shows, and books really fires my imagination and has inspired (if not influenced) my artwork a great deal. So this week will be Sci-Fi Week and I'll post the very few "space" paintings I've done.

But the thing is, out of the hundreds of images I've made, there are very few that deal with or contain any science fiction elements. Even this one is a hybrid of 20th Century North American fashion mashed up with the Lars moisture farm homestead on Tatooine. I don't know why I combined this model (from a fashion magazine) with Luke Skywalker's home; back then Star Wars was only beginning its resurgence into the general public's face (and even with the "special editions" being released in cinemas, there was still only "Star Wars," "Empire," and "Jedi") and it still felt like it was a sort of underground thing to do --and I felt I was being cheeky, not geeky.

Also, I don't know where that title, including the weird use of square brackets, means or came from. "Taking a break on Tatooine," I guess...maybe...

The "sand" texture in the foreground was made using the age-old technique of spraying the paint by running my thumbnail along the bristles of a toothbrush dipped in paint. I usually make a rough mask of the areas I don't want affected by tracing that shape on regular paper, cutting it out, and weighing it down with whatever fits (erasers, scissors, pens, etc.).

Like most paintings, this one is tricky to photograph and looks better in person.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Axel Foley's Chevy Nova (1/25 scale model)

Multiple tributes, here. I remember first seeing  Beverly Hills Cop  on video at my friend Chris K's house, 'cause his family had a VCR and we'd watch tons of movies (and record music videos) together. The summer of 1984 was a special time for us (having created a strong bond in school since Grade 6 a few years before), going on biking adventures around the 'burbs and into the city, etc., and home video played an important role from then until I moved to the opposite end of Scarborough just before we started high school. We liked the movie a lot, both of us fans of Eddie Murphy from his  Saturday Night Live  days. I don't think I'd seen the movie since then (it would have been 1985, probably summer, since the movie came out in late 1984) and I became curious to see if it still held up. It did. It does. I found Murphy as charming as ever and the comedy (and even the action) holds up very well and its very re-watchable and very entertaining.  Beverly Hi...
7 comments
Read more

Time Travel Helmet

The theme for this year's Firelight Lantern Festival is The Time Machine , and Krista and I were going to put together steampunk-inspired costumes for ourselves (which is why the helmet's painted in hammered bronze), but, after shooting the announcement video (second video at the bottom of this post) I decided I'd look better with a lab coat, bow tie, and goggles for a generic 20th Century scientist look. I'd previously built a jetpack as sci-fi costume accessory for stiltwalking purposes back in 2015, so if I were to combine this helmet, the jetpack, and my refurbished blaster and I'd have a pretty good, mostly homemade, sci-fi costume for...something...down the line... Creature! It sorta looks like a weird electronic sea cucumber or sea anemone from the top. More dieselpunk than steampunk; I like it. They were originally crystal clear plastic, but I sanded the insides and outsides to better disperse the light from the LEDs (which I bought, pre-wired...
Post a Comment
Read more

YT-1300 Freighter w/Cargo Carriage (scale model), Part 1

For a couple of decades, now, I'd been curious about two things concerning the Millennium Falcon: what it looked like as a brand new, unmodified ship ...and how exactly did it work as a "freighter," anyway? That other build takes care of my curiosity about the ship, this one takes care of my curiosity about the freighter question... Hail, Bandai. Bandai Star Wars kits are amazing. Their larger models are super detailed, but even these tiny kits (the Falcon here is about 1/350 scale) are superior to many previous and current Star Wars kits by MPC, AMT, or Revell. Mini sprue tour. Interestingly, this version of the Falcon is the one from Star Wars , having only three landing gear boxes (two more were added to the front for Empire ), but the larger version I built as factory stock had five because it was the version from The Force Awakens . My only (very minor) complaint is that these smaller kits only have stickers instead of decals (the larger kits...
1 comment
Read more