Transit of the Holidays

It’s two days after Christmas and six days before the New Year. It’s like a transitional period between one thing and another. It’s the transit of the holidays.

I suppose I should look back over the year that was and draw some sort of meaning out of it. I’m really not sure how to do that, though. I am a visual artist (mostly) and therefore prefer to look at images. Perhaps that would be the best thing to do… let’s look at some pictures.

In my research for these blog posts I look at many images and select a large number before whittling them down to the few that will accompany the post. Sometimes leaving one or another image out of the final post is difficult. Here are a few that got left behind.

My last post was about science fiction Christmas and there were a lot of examples that had to get left out. Here are three by Ed Emshwiller. Two covers for Galaxy Magazine and one from Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine:

I love Emshwiller’s work and I was sorry that I wasn’t able to get all of his Christmas covers into the post last week. Hopefully this makes up for it now.

The week before that I wrote about the Illustrated Dune. I love the paintings that John Schoenherr did for his Illustrated Dune and I was sorry that I was not able to include all of them. Here is his depiction of the Imperial Sardauker that I had to leave behind:

Previously to that I wrote a post about the science fiction bikini. There were a lot (a whole lot) of pictures that I had to go through in order to find just the right ones. It was meticulous and exacting work. Here are some images that didn’t make the final cut.

 As you can see I do an exhaustive amount of research on these topics.

As well as writing these blog posts I am a working artist. I have done a number of paintings for book covers this year. Here are a few that I can share here.

I did two Christmas covers back in August. One was for a book by Joshua M. Reynolds called Haunted Holidays, a collection of stories which feature his character Charles St.Cyprian, the Royal Occultist. I was asked to depict a story featuring the Krampus.

This was a fun cover to do. I particularly enjoyed painting the details of the Krampus and the smoke and fire effects.

I was then asked to paint another cover featuring Charles St, Cyprian. This one was for Joel Jenkin’s Pulpwork Press Christmas Special for 2014. I was asked to depict the heroes facing off against a Wendigo. I had to do some research on the Wendigo which helped me to find a way to depict the enigmatic creature. I liked the way he turned out.

Depicting the action was a challenge but well worth the effort. I’m quite pleased with the way the whole thing turned out.

And just for fun here are a few more images I created this year, of no particular provenance:

Well, that’s it from me for this year. Next year it will be a whole new ball game. I hope you all have a pleasant rest of your holidays and a smashing good New Year!