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Description
Oil painting with some inks.
Inspiration - giant interstellar cargo freighter from Asimov's Foundation series
This is the one that 'started it all'... After leaving school during the summer holiday at home I began sketching my next big painting that I was going to do. I spent every day poring over pictures from Star Wars in magazines and book covers by Chris Foss whose amazing covers adorned the paperbacks of Asimov, Clarke and E.E. Doc Smith lying around the house. When Star Wars arrived it was like his spaceships had come to life, only more so! I was also inspired by Battlestar Galactica, the art of Alien and Foss' art from Jodorowski's aborted Dune movie, etc. I had taken engineering drawing at school with a career in industrial design or architecture in mind, so I had practiced my perspective and geometric construction. And my father had acquired a giant engineer's drawing board that he put in my bedroom since there was no room for it anywhere else. I found a piece of hardboard, painted it with some orange undercoat primer lying around in the garage and set up my drawing on the board with vanishing points and added some fisheye lens distortion inspired by Escher. I deliberately painted it with harsh light and dark shadows just like space photography and meticulously projected each shadow cast onto the surface of the ship. I studied how Foss had created the impression of tiny metal panels on his ships and tried to emulate that, painting a thin layer of light grey and etching it out with the end of a paintbrush. I used a Rotring drafting pen to pick out some of the finer black line details. I tried my first go at airbrushing for the nebula, using a cheap Humbrol model kit airbrush for my crude attempts. It was taking me weeks and my first term at university started, so I continued to resume work on it when I could during the holidays, finally finishing it after a period of 9 months. This was my first professional sample, which would turn out to be the best picture I've ever done. When photographed it was slightly over-exposed which enhanced that contrasty look I was going for and only further enhanced its realism. It helped get me a job at many places including Dreamworks, people would generally ask if it was a physical model or later a cg render.
Image size
1400x1000px 277.8 KB
© 2011 - 2026 rmohr
Comments38
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I have seen this years ago on tumblr, uncredited and in low resolution. Great, that I have found the orignal author. I also thought, it was a miniature from some old film. The lighting, the sense of scale, the details, everything is epic and inspiring.