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I have a 6 page spread in the current Spring issue of American Artist's Watercolor Magazine. It has just hit newsstands, I hope you have a chance to check it out.
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How to Train Your Dragon comes out next week, we're very proud of how it turned out so I hope you'll have a chance to see it.

This is a poster for marketing done by Emil Mitev and myself.
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Ink on paper.
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A scene painted for The Road to El Dorado back in '98. Acrylic on illustration board with a little photoshop work.
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Compressed charcoal on rives paper, 16"x 26".
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These are color key roughs for the animated movie Shark Tale. This approach was meant to be a fun and splashy way of quickly establishing the lighting and feel of a location in photoshop.
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Compressed charcoal on ivory Strathmore paper.
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FIRST CONTACT

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Every once in a while we do a post on science fiction stories here. For me the genre is just endlessly interesting thanks to remarkable storytellers who break new ground with each advancement in technology, biology, evolutionary psychology, etc. If you add into the mix recent discoveries of planets potentially capable of harboring life in other solar systems, suddenly novels of "first contact" have intriguing new playgrounds. A recent novel I haven't been able to stop thinking about is Blindsight by Peter Watts. It in part explores the questions: If an extrasolar intelligence arrived, would it even be possible for us to parse a completely alien psychology? And how would we react if it seemed to refuse contact or took no notice of our attempts to do so? We have a poor track record in dealing with things we don't understand and that frighten us, and Blindsight is a frightening novel. It has a kind of Richard Dawkins fueled bleakness that makes the story compelling but not at all the more hopeful alien contact described in something like Carl Sagan's novel, Contact.
I would very much like to be on the optimistic side but this novel left me hoping that if they're out there, we never meet them. It makes me remember footage from a SETI conference where anthropologist Ashley Montagu said "I can think of no worse fate for the human race than to meet a more advanced alien intelligence" (paraphrased), much to the chagrin of the more optimistic Carl Sagan seated next to him.

A few other suggestions of hard SF tales of first contact:

• Mote in God's Eye; Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
  
• The Sparrow; Mary Doria Russel
• Fiasco; Stanislaw Lem (the title being an ironic understating of the horrifying results when we attempt to force first contact on another solar system.)
• Illegal Alien; Robert J. Sawyer
• Revelation Space; Alastair Reynolds
• Blind Lake; Robert Charles Wilson
  
• Eater; Gregory Benford
• Spin; Robert Charles Wilson
• Eifelheim; Michael Flynn
  

How about your suggestions? Do you have a favorite story of first contact or other science fiction recommendation?

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Gouache quick studies, about 5"x 7" each.
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A little different approach here than my usual compressed charcoal. This is a Berol wide lead charcoal pencil on Strathmore charcoal paper. The pencils haven't been available for a decade now but I was clever enough to stock up at the time.
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Night Heron. Watercolor on hot press illustration board.
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Charcoal Demo

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Anya. Compressed charcoal on rives paper.



1) Construction drawing. Being careful here allows for a confident stroke when I start using the compressed charcoal stick.


2) Establishing landmarks so as to not loose the drawing as the charcoal gets pushed around in later stages.


3) Value block in.


4) Smoothing values and touching up the drawing with the corner of the charcoal stick.


Wow, what a mess. This is one of the reasons I don't specifically encourage my technique. There are dozens of ways you can apply the medium. It's the principles of value (light and shadow), structure, edges and composition that really matter.


5) Final touch up with a kneaded eraser and charcoal stick.

PROJECT DAEDALUS, 1994

This is a project I did back when I was at Art Center College of Design in the early nineties. After foundational courses in drawing and painting I wanted to focus on entertainment design with an eye toward science fiction. So for my 6th term elective I chose to illustrate "Project Daedalus", a scientifically possible mission to a nearby star as proposed by the British Interplanetary Society. This was before photoshop, maya or terragen. My efforts were more than modest and primitve compared to the extraordinary work being done now but I enjoyed doing it. Here are the bits and pieces of it that I still have.

Presentation at Art Center College of Design:








The design pages were made in adobe illustrator and the illustrations are in gouache and marker.
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Compressed charcoal on Rives lithograph paper.
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A scene painted for The Road to El Dorado back in '98. Acrylic with a little photoshop work.
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Charcoal on Canson paper.
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Some images from The Prince of Egypt this week:


Final frame from the film.


Painted background columns.




Color key painting:


The Backgrounds were painted in sections so they cold be reused in other scenes. The columns were difficult to paint and they seemed never ending; if we'd had photoshop back then they would have taken a fraction of the time. But I am glad to have learned the discipline with acrylics, I liked the all or none nature of the medium. You had to nail it on the first pass (though you could touch up with some glazing). Each column was masked off with tape and painted wet on wet with no air brushing.

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Watercolor on Arches cold pressed watercolor paper.
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Charcoal and nupastel on strathmore paper.
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Here's a followup from last week's post. After the location was approved, I did these color keys as story moments and for character lighting. Character drawings were provided by animation.
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