Orphaned
Or Falling off the Edge of the Earth I was going to write something whimsical about how and when the Earth was thought to be flat, but an illustrator friend reminded me of something that seemed far more important than falling off a hypothetical edge of the world, and...
Barsoom, Pellucidar, Amtor, Caspak and Beyond
Or The Curious Business of Meal Tickets and Realms of Fantasy Recently I’ve been happily plowing through a biography of Edgar Rice Burroughs. A hefty two-volume affair, by Irwin Porges, it is eminently entertaining reading and above all packed with quotes. The must...
What you see…
... IS, WELL, WHAT YOU SEE Or The Lego Box View of the World of Yore and a Few Other Considerations I’ve been spending a lot of time leafing through old atlases and encyclopedias, both physically and on the net, and have become enamoured of the various and varying...
Pretty as a Picture
Or Mountains and Molehills of the Mind The other day, walking outdoors was like stepping into a picture. The lake and precocious moon were by Aivasovsky. Not turbulent enough to try as a Turner, but there was a hint of mist courtesy of Caspar David Friedrich. The...
On the Absolute Necessity of Erosion
(And Some Curious Thin Tetracentennial Men, as well as Some Stone Dwarfs) The other day, on a business trip (I love saying “business trip”, it makes this cockeyed profession of drawing pictures sound somehow actually respectable) to the Alsace, we took a couple of...
Best Wishes for 2008
Or The Lowdown on Pencil Management and Some Thoughts on Things To Come ImagineFX Something to read, from the December issue of fantasy magazine ImagineFX, with a portrait of Grendel’s Mum, the lowdown on pencils and a few words about architecture, triviality and...
Librairie La Bulle, Fribourg
DECEMBER 22, 2007 I’ll be signing books and such at the Librairie la Bulle, in Fribourg, Switzerland on December 22nd, from 5:30 p.m. to closing time , around 7 p.m. (This is the only one before Christmas, more will be following, but in the spring, when Fantasy Art...
Bunnies, Worldbuilding & Capital-P Plots
Or One Author’s Trip to the Woods To me, writers are mysterious creatures. They make things with words. Pictures are easy, kids do them without thinking. Words are harder, as it implies keeping that gift of spontanteous espression, but using a sophisticated and...
Heads, Clouds and Conversations
Or the Perilous Pertinence of Perspicacity Premeditated (Or Exercises in Applied Floccinaucinihilipilificatiousness) I’m often told I’ve got my “head in the clouds”. While that’s clearly metaphorical, or at least I dearly hope so, I recently had the opportunity to get...
Getting it Wrong
Or the Fine Art of Pentimento, Peccadillo and Palimpsest Occasionally, a picture goes awry. Some images have tales to tell independantly to what’s actually pictured in them, some come a long way, and many abruptly come to a premature conclusion. The snapshot of the...
Pictura and Gnarus
Or Talking About Somebody ELSE’S Work for a Change Occasionally I am given the opportunity to write a preface for a book of another artist’s work. It’s an exercise I thoroughly enjoy, an opportunity to pry up the cowling and peek in at the inner workings of another...
Paint Your Dragon
Or Of The Topography of Tesseracts and the Ineffable Benefits of Entasis I spend a fair bit of time pondering the imponderables (that’s why it takes time) of fantasy imagery. Fantasy imagery has been happening for a long time. In fact no culture, ever, has created...
