Yet another entry in a series of column headings I’ll be posting for The Ether Still Vibrates, which I occasionally produce for Robert Lichtman’s Trap Door.  Having the opportunity to repeatedly provide illustrations like this allows me to explore different kinds of decorative eye candy, and gives me an excuse to play with various styles of hand lettering, a difficult skill that I take a lot of pleasure in.

Here’s another in a series of column headings I’ll be posting for The Ether Still Vibrates, which I occasionally produce for Robert Lichtman’s Trap Door.  Having the opportunity to repeatedly provide illustrations like this allows me to explore different kinds of decorative eye candy, and gives me an excuse to play with various styles of hand lettering, a difficult skill that I take a lot of pleasure in.

This is the first in a series of column headings I’ll be posting for The Ether Still Vibrates, which I occasionally produce for Robert Lichtman’s Trap Door.  Having the opportunity to repeatedly provide illustrations like this allows me to explore different kinds of decorative eye candy, and gives me an excuse to play with various styles of hand lettering, a difficult skill that I take a lot of pleasure in.

Here’s another science fictional drawing done in the Art Deco style.  Called Space Medusa, it appeared as a cover on Robert Lichtman’s Trapdoor.  Yes, that’s old skool zip-a-tone, too.  I enjoy the idea of a retro-futuristic view of the worlds of tomorrow.

I’ve been fascinated by Art Deco for a long time and this illustration, Space Deco Dance, was one of several pieces I did in that style.  Though rarely used in science fiction, I have been interested in combining the two for quite a while and did several fanzine covers that featured this highly streamlined graphic style.  This one appeared as a cover on Robert Lichtman’s Trapdoor.

This illustration, called Cockpit, was drawn in the months approaching the 30th anniversary of the death of my mentor Vaughn Bode.  I met him when I was a teenager and knew him for the last five years of his life.  We both lived in Syracuse, New York and I followed him into the Syracuse University College of Art in 1971, where I ended up with some of the same professors that had taught him five years earlier — though I learned far more from him than I did at school.  As the anniversary of his death approached, I decided to create this illustration that paid homage to him and his love of aircraft technology.  Though he drew in a cartoonish style, his attention to realistic detail was intense and gave his work a believability that was unexpected and eye catching.  I drew this with him in mind.  It was published as the cover to the eleventh issue of Chunga in January 2006.

This is a pin-up for a project called Afterlife from the late 1990s.  With the exception of another pin-up, the project was never completed due to the death of my editor and friend, Lou Stathis.  Lou, a brilliant critical writer and essayist, was an editor at DC’s Vertigo line when he died tragically of a brain tumor in 1998.  I miss him to this day.

Illustration for HP Lovecraft’s The Tomb, 2007.  This is another shot at illustrating a story that has been tackled by many before me.  My objective here was to show the mundane quality of the cemetery keeper’s occupation.  Day in and day out he works among the dead, but is oblivious to the possible horrors that seem to be so obvious to the viewer and reader, not to mention the author.  To him it’s just another shitty day at his wet, smelly, and depressing job.

Illustration for HP Lovecraft’s Pickman’s Model, 2007.  As an exercise I sometimes like to try and illustrate well known stories and try to find something in them that is different from what’s been done by all the other illustrators before me.  For this story I decided to avoid the obvious and concentrate on trying to capture the impending unknown in the narrative.  In the story the protagonist has heard many scary rumors about Pickman and his isolated studio.  Here he nervously waits in a room that is full of hints of what may be lurking in the basement if the rumors are true.

Here’s one from the olden timey days when I worked in the art department at Heavy Metal, in 1980.  This was a subscription ad for the magazine that I designed and illustrated.  Interestingly, I misspelled “newsstand” in the original art and had to fix it in the mechanical before printing.  I still have the original for this one in my files, misspelling and all.