Scale in the Iron Empires
The graphic novel I’m working on is centered on space travel, strategy and tactics in the Iron Empires. As a result, scale becomes an issue. From my notebook: Interstellar Scales Parsec (pc) – 1,000 parsecs is 1 kpc (kiloparsec). – one parsec is approximately 3.262 light years. – the center of the Milky Way is [...]
Continue ReadingWhen Death Finds You, May it Find You Alive
“Almost all cultures have the notion that there is a judgment when we die. Some kind of accounting has to be made of one’s life. I believe God – and to me “God” is just shorthand for the ineffable divine presence – has only one question for us at the end: “Did you become yourself“? We [...]
Continue ReadingThe Power of the Unconscious
This is something of a follow-up to my last post. Over the years I’ve become increasingly aware of how much richer the unconscious mind is, creatively, than the conscious mind. As artists, we use our unconscious minds all the time, if only to let us know when a piece feels finished, or if an element we are introducing to a painting [...]
Continue ReadingWhere Images Come From
I’ve found, as a commercial artist, that personal pieces are surprisingly hard to do. I say surprisingly, because this is what we want, right? No client, no rules, we can paint whatever we want! What I’ve found is that personal pieces resist “designing”. The process I usually go through when preparing for [...]
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