Some Science-Fiction to Brighten (Blind) Your Day

Nothing helps you hide
like glow-in-the-dark eyes.

Just a quickie random bit of science-fiction imagery to break things up a bit.

This actually is character / environment I used to draw a lot in secondary school, thinking it was something I could turn into a fully fledged fictional world. While I did wring some ideas out of it what I think are quite good for other potential projects, it was a case of coming up with a "world" before a story, which will almost never work.

Then again, I was 16 at the time, so I don't think I quite grasped that difficulty.

The world in question revolved around a giant city that had expanded upwards to the point where roads and footpaths were all essentially "skyways"between high-rise buildings, glass half-cylinders lit by yellow ribs of light, creating a mix between a cathedral nave and a hamster tube. And of course it being a world devised by a 16 year old boy, it was a society policed by an oppressive corps of quasi-fascistic super soldiers, hiding behind impassive glowing red eyes.

On the Beach

A typical Irish summer.

Just a quickie little tonal piece again, this time our intrepid hero shortly after arrival. Still needs work, just wanted to convey the idea of a vast stretch of low-tide beach covered in sky-reflecting tide pools.

Hospitable looking place, isn't it?

Totila

Trying to channel a bit of Gustave Doré here I suppose...

Just a quickie little rough tonal sketch here, done in Corel Painter.

I've always been fascinated by the marginal corners of history, people and events either shrouded by obscurity or by not having been chronicled. This is a not-at-all-historically-accurate fanciful rendering of Totila, the 6th Century Ostrogothic warlord the day he conquered Naples. It had been a long siege and the locals were terrified that once they had surrendered they'd be massacred by the supposed barbarian. To their surprise, he instead delivered a speech about how Italians should resent being an exploited colony of the Byzantines, and gave a rebuke of colonialism that sounds strikingly modern.

I imagine him here having just entered the city, standing atop their walls to address them — imposing and alien, yet stoic and egalitarian. Part of the pose was inspired by the Soviet war memorial near Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.