Blast from the Past #380: "Iceworms"

This is one of those drawings that I like a lot, because I feel it was almost completely successful in its execution... but like many of my drawings from the period of the late 1970's and early 1980's, I don't remember exactly what it was done for.

It is likely a drawing done to illustrate a story or column in "Hampshire Life", but it also just weird enough (worms in ice...?) to have been one of the drawings I produced for various horror/science fiction fanzines back then. Maybe someday I will stumble across the printed version and know for sure.

This was one more example of using the shading film which had opaque WHITE dots instead of BLACK dots. I found it a nice way to produce a muted effect when laid over black line work -- here it works to sell the idea that the worms are inside the ice cubes. -- PL

Blast from the Past #348: Fanzine drawing -- "Four-armed assassins"

This is another drawing I did for a fanzine in 1984, and I think it may have been meant to go with the other one I just posted recently. I say this because there is a tiny thread of memory drifting around in my head that links them, and because the inking styles are so similar, and also because the thing that one of the assassins is sculpting -- a mask, perhaps? -- looks suspiciously like it might be intended to replicate the look of one of "Star Trek"'s well-known alien species.

And that would be a Tellarite, first seen, I believe, in the "Journey to Babel" episode of the original "Star Trek" series (one of my favorite episodes, by the way). I could be wrong about the provenance of this drawing, but it feels right to me. -- PL

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

Blast from the Past #345: Fanzine drawing -- "Klingon shopping with Vulcan"

Just got in from about an hour and a half of snowblowing and shoveling (and a little bit of plowing) -- the big winter storm that was predicted DID in fact drop quite a bit of snow on us. Right now, it seems to have stopped, and I am hoping we don't get more today. I am definitely tired of New England winters.

Anyway, back to warmer pursuits -- like blogging.

This drawing is another one I did for some fanzine sometime in 1984, but that's about all I can remember. It is so specific in its details that I am almost certain it was drawn to accompany a piece of "Star Trek" fan fiction. -- PL

STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.

Blast from the Past #343: Fantasy illustration

This is another one of those drawings from the early 1980's for which I cannot recall too many salient facts.

I am not even sure if it was drawn to be published, though the specificity of some of the details -- like the look of the monster -- leads me to believe it was a commission for a fanzine. -- PL

Blast from the Past #341: Fanzine drawing: Goblins with pig

I don't remember much -- okay, ANYTHING, really -- about the story for which this fanzine illustration was done, but it was obviously an image specific to the tale. I like this one. The pig is cute, and the goblins are goblin-y. -- PL

Blast from the Past #340: Man with Tarot card (fanzine drawing)

fanThis is another one of those drawings I did for fanzines in the 1980's, in this case 1983. I drew this one on coquille board, and I think it was a good technique choice, because it allowed me to fairly easily do those crazy "magic vibe" designs around the character holding the tarot card.

I have no distinct memory of the story that this piece was meant to illustrate, but the details in this drawing are so specific, I suspect I paid pretty close attention to what had been written to get all the bits right. 

At least, I hope I did! -- PL

Blast from the Past #339: fanzine drawing

I am pretty sure this was drawn in the early 1980's, very likely for one of the fantasy fanzines I occasionally did stuff for. It's interesting for me to look at now because it may be the ONLY existing example of my work using a shading technique I experimented with back then.

It was a derivative of presstype -- you know, those sheets of letters which you could lay down over a layout and rub with some kind of burnishing tool to transfer the letter you chose to the surface you were working on. Hmmm... does anyone still use that stuff? What with the ubiquity of computers and graphics programs which make doing text a breeze, it may be that presstype has gone the way of the dodo. Maybe not -- I just haven't seen any in stores lately. (Of course, I haven't been LOOKING for it, either.)

Anyway, this stuff used the same technology as presstype, only instead of letters or numbers, it had tones. In this case, it was a middle-range grey tone made up of dots. As you can see, I used it to give some tonal value to the rocks in the drawing.

As I recall, it was fun to try, but I quickly realized that it wasn't for me -- and if memory serves, one of the reasons for that was its cost. I think it was more expensive than the shading films I used at the time. In any event, I think this was the only time I used it for an illustration job. -- PL

Blast from the Past #319: Flame sword

These two drawings were very likely done back in the late 1970's or early 1980's, when part of my meager income was derived from illustrations I created for various fanzines. I am not certain that either was ever published (actually, I AM certain that the unfinished inked one wasn't).

Although I have done it a few times, I was never that into doing multiple versions of a drawing -- I guess I just got too bored. But for some reason, I did it with this one. I don't have a clear memory of why, but I suspect this was the first version, drawn in pencil and then partially inked:



For whatever reason, I declined to finish inking this piece. It's likely that as I was inking it, I saw that it might benefit from the more easily obtainable lighting effects possible with a different media, specifically the coquille board I was experimenting with around that time. So out came my trusty homemade light table, and I transferred the basic image to a piece of the coquille board and finished it thusly. -- PL

Blast from the Past #281: Creepy gardener

I drew this back in 1984, but I can't recall the exact circumstances of its creation. My best recollection is that it was one of the handfull of drawings I did for various fanzines.



I actually like this one a lot, especially the folds in the gardener's shirt. -- PL

"Arngrim entrapped by Gorilon's monster" (early fanzine drawing)

This is another one of those fantasy fanzine drawings I did back in the late 1970's and early 1980's -- some of the actual FUN stuff I did as a freelancer. I can't remember which fanzine this was done for, but a penciled note at the bottom of this art refers to it as an image of "Arngrim entrapped by Gorilon's monster". I vaguely remember some Conan-like barbarian character named Arngrim in a story I was hired to illustrate. I like the lighting effect in this drawing. -- PL

Blast from the Past #180: Angry Dwarf

I can't recall exactly what fanzine this was drawn for in the 1980's, but I'm pretty sure that I actually got paid for it (not much, but still...!). I think this was one of several drawings done to illustrate one story, something very Tolkeinesque (hence this somewhat Gimli-like dwarf). -- PL