Tower and Device

Ferbin and Holse approach the D'Neng-Oal Tower on caudeback.

The Machine

The final images for my third year final project, intended to book-end the main story of Matter by Iain M. Banks.

Wish me luck, I'll be handing this in tomorrow.

With thanks to Ellie, for being very patient while I waffle on about aliens and composition, and for helping with the strenuous task of tearing paper in two.

and also, of course, Iain M. Banks, for writing such good books with plenty of imaginative visual material in the first place.

Oct

Oct/Inheritors

claim descent Involucra; control (most) travel within Towers of Sursamen and many other Shellworlds; octal Waterworlders; LLI

For my final project at uni. For the appendix of my fictional ‘Illustrated Edition’ of Matter, by Iain M. Banks. Here's some shite cameraphone pictures, taken today just after the books were finally printed and completed!

Not affiliated to Banks or his publisher.

Planet of the Dead

'. . . A sky like chipped ice, a wind to cut you to the body core. Too cold for snow, for most of the journey, but once for eleven days and nights it came, a blizzard over the field of ice we walked on, howling like an animal, with a bite like steel. The crystals of ice flowed like a single torrent over the hard and frozen land. You could not look into it or breath; even trying to stand was near impossible. We made a hole, shallow and cold, and lay in it until the skies cleared.'

- Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks

Back cover forConsider Phlebas, from the speculative book cover project. Again, not affiliated in any way to Banks or his publisher and purely a speculative university project.

Sleeper Service

Click for big

Culture "Plate" class General Systems Vehicle Sleeper Service (previously Quietly Confident)

For the spines of the speculative book cover project. A full set of the covers reveals the image of the ship.

We Passed Over

"Scans of the swarming, amorphous beings abdominal cavity proved inconclusive. The silently crowding creatures on the snow-covered surface were entirely soulless but possessed a great concentration of energy.

We passed over while evading detection from the fleets in orbit, and they did not stir."

Holy Creature

10 minute dodgy-arse speedpaint. Don't know why.

A Hypnagogic Hallucination

"Hypnagogic Hallucination - Gygici Feeder"

Adobe Photoshop CS3
1 hour speedpaint
Frost

"From the 5th Dimensional ecosystem, the Gygici Feeders are seen hoovering up the excess energy from the Gogyc Supportus ( running through all Real objects, as by the Creators will) and their flora.

This feeder was observed feeding off of Gogyc Kelp, from the Supportus of a pile of clothes. See figure.1 - "E piele of cloeths witter Gogyc Supportus""

-Extract from "E Gide of Korporiility und'er Subgogyc", unknown author.

Republic III - Flatiron Station

"Republic III: Flatiron Station"
Adobe Photoshop CS2 - 2.5 hrs
Frost

Roughs

Alien design

Heres a bit of backdated filler while I do another painting today.

Old Mother Star

Old Star wallows in its fading embers, throbbing with its dying energy. Shackled and chained by the ones it fed and raised from the dirt and the earth, a museum piece finally cast aside at the end of her life. A dull hum fills the chamber, pattering over the edge of human perception. She's singing but there's no one to hear tonight but her birds.

She sits alone on her autumn throne in the Republic Museum of Natural History. The Old Star replaced by New Sun, and on the first day of her successors rising she sat in the museum filled with the galaxies wonders and sighed. She's the beating heart of what was Sol, ripped from the core of that bloated husk and replaced with a new, stronger heart. They said that the homeworld took precedence of the course of stellar nature and that she'd be compressed and suspended to rest in the vaults of the museum for all to see and wonder at, to teach the children of a time when it was her soft yellow light that lit the summers of their ancestors.

The Old Man Moon gazes down at his old friend from the vault opening, still spinning strong on his course but inching further and further away. He watched over her children from the heavens while she slept below the horizon and now they are grown the children and he have become friends. Upon him too as well as the Earth they live peacefully.

Old Mother Star weakens year by year but her glow still blesses the visitors who come see her in droves every day.

One day she'll die and her children will mourn her passing.

Some day it will be New Sun sitting in her throne.

The wheel rolls on.

Future of Mankind

Submitted to the Observer for a competition.

Bird and Bear and Hare and Fish

"The Dark Tower - Shardiks Beam"
Adobe Photoshop CS3 - 3 hours
Frost

Mountain Cat

"Bergkatze"

"Bergkatze Seele,
Wie ist dein schlau Aale?
Hoch Bergkatze hoert mich wenn,
Ich gehe aal zu fische denn.

Bergkatze wissen,
Wie schlau bist Alan?
Lebt mich nicht allein
Doch Alan interessant sein."

A birthday and a backdated Frost entry

Its Ellie's birthday today so yaaay about that. She's old now, 21. In dog years thats REALLY old but she's not a dog. Here is some art by Frost.

Part of my Foundation final major, depicting World War

Another of my Foundation FMP, later on in the book. Mankind has colonised the galaxy following an intervention by a benevolent alien species.

My first silk-screen print.

Part of a joint project with an excellent graphic designer called Jill Hunter, from my foundation course. This is purely my own work, and one of several parts to the collaboration.

A birthday card for Jill's birthday.

Another part of the FMP, dealing with the end of the universe after the transcendence of man. The book had the poem 'Darkness' by Lord Byron on the right hand page, in the expanse of black.

An actual non-digital painting about 4-5 foot long using oil paint, stuck on images and emulsion on wooden board.

Republic II

"Republic II"
Adobe Photoshop CS2 -3 hours
Frost

Republic I

"Republic I"
Adobe Photoshop CS2 -2 hours
Frost

Inspired by the view outbound from the Dominican Republic to the UK.
Source image

For Old Times Sake

Thought I would post some of my old stuff. The collective is out of university hours at the moment so updates are going to be few and far between. We need content and we need to pick up a readership so we'll be supplying some backdated eye candy.

Some robot Masai hunters roaming the plains of Kenya

.The HMS Sovereign, a United Kingdom Star-Dreadnought

I got bitched at by my tutor for spending so much time on this. Its pointless but it looks kind of good.

Maidstone, the town most of us live, study and work in at the moment. I once described its residents a a slurry, flowing haphazard down the streets like living sewage. I was being overly-dramatic really, Maidstone is okay.

Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

"My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby."

...

"If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be."

...

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew. "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.''

- Robert Browning