Rocket sketches....

"Mars Landing"

"Mystery Ship"

"Spaceship Summer"

"Last to Leave"

Here are some sketchbook musings. Of course, I love "rocket" pictures and I went on a seemingly free-flow of ideas that all came at once. The first one up top is something I am working into a cover job I'm doing-the 2nd volume of RA Heinlein scripts. "Mystery Ship" is that long played with idea of finding an apparently derelict ship on another planet...I'm into the idea of a spaceship sort of enshrouded in fog of some kind. "Spaceship Summer" is another idea I got from combining my love of English landscapes with the idea of rockets in them -for no particular reason other than to juxtapose the idea of something very out of place given the prosaic enviroment. "Last to Leave" is an astro art idea of some planet on the verge of destruction and a spacecraft lifting off from it, with a bloated red dying sun, and the planet starting to crack apart in it's death throes.

These are all examples of how a painting starts, in my mind. Very quick sketches to get down the general idea and composition, all done in charcoal pencil which is a great medium to work in.

With any luck they will be developed into larger paintings.