Visions, Lightly Fevered

Tchiri

A breakthrough work for me, because it was done in one layer with very little overpainting. I had designed an avian-humanoid, who lived in the jungle environment that had nurtured her parrot-like distant ancestors.

Comet Rendezvous

A portfolio piece from 1989, inspired by astronomical illustrators like Don Davis and Atilla Heja. In an alternate reality, where the mission had not been cancelled due to budget cuts, the CRAF (Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby) spacecraft is seen flying inside the comet's murky gas coma and launching its sampling "penetrator."

Eta Cassiopeiae

The setting is a conjectural planetary system around the factual Eta Cassiopeiae A, a sun-like star about twenty light-years away. Eta Cass A has a red dwarf star orbiting it at Neptune-like distances; both are visible in this view from the polar regions of A's hypothetical terrestrial planet, itself a binary planet. For this portfolio, I had created a whole technological syndrome involving articulated spacecraft such as you see in the background.

Monastery

Very much inspired by Howard Pyle's piratical scenes. Like most other of my portfolio pieces from circa 1990, I spent many months planning this raid.

Nomads

From the same self-invented story cycle as Monastery. I was enthralled by the accounts by explorers like Marco Polo and nineteenth-century Sven Hedin who described the hardscrabble lives of Cental Asian nomads -- the Mongols, the Kyrgyz, the Uzbeks. In high-altitude terrain with no trees, there were once tribes who got their every worldy need from the body of the Yak, which itself lives by scraping lichens from the surface of rocks.

Triton

A little adventure vignette set on the moon of Neptune. The wild cold of the place as well as the dim, pinprick sun formed the inspiration. You might be able to read by the sunlight there, but just barely, as under a full moon. The lighter snow in the background is nitrogen frost. The rock features are actually dirty water ice; but at this temperature, ice behaves exactly like stone.

Striking Water

On Mars, water is something mined. Below the regolith, it is hard as concrete and as prized a find as oil on Earth. This high-tech nomad is standing in Hellas, one of the lowest elevations on Mars, where deposits of ice lie close enough to the surface to be reached by his portable drill.