Monday, February 28, 2011

Eskimo Breakup



I had to take a break from my Years of Rice and Salt illustrations because I was falling waaaay behind on Savage Nobles in the Land of Enchantment, which is still my #1 drawing priority, at least for another 35 pages, damn it all.

This heartwrenching spread is for the upcoming issue of Stumptown Underground, with the extremely unfortunate theme of "breakups." Pick it up at a comic store near you and enjoy more mopey, Craig Thomson-y navel-gazing than anybody ever thought you'd need. Then buck the hell up and draw something for April's issue, which will be about "friendship," thank goodness.

And just in case you want to still believe in love, check out the hot lip-lockin' action in today's installment of "SNitLoE." Looks like Theo's found the universal language, ho ho!



See you soon with more art!

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Thursday, February 17, 2011

5.) Warp and Weft




Here's my illustration from chapter five of Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt, an alternate history novel that imagines how history might have developed if the plague had wiped out 99% of the European population instead of 30-60%.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

4.) The Alchemist




Click to read my explanation of what's happening here.

Friday, February 11, 2011

3.) Ocean Continents



Here's my illustration for chapter three of The Years of Rice and Salt, in which the Chinese discover the New World.

Sunday, February 6, 2011

2.) The Haj in the Heart



Here's my illustration for chapter two of Kim Stanley Robinson's alternate history novel The Years of Rice and Salt, entitled "The Haj in the Heart."

Friday, February 4, 2011

1.) Awake to Emptiness



I'm hoping to do a series of illustrations based around the chapters of one of my favorite novels of all time, The Years of Rice and Salt, by Kim Stanley Robinson, which I am rereading this month. This project is partly to give me a little bit of a break from SNitLoE, which for some reason has been bogging me down a little bit, and partly to introduce myself to new art techniques, like the ink-wash used here. I also want to practice the "illustration-a-day" ethos of Benjamin Dewey, where the point is not for an illustration to be be perfect in every way, but for it to be completely finished in a day. This drawing took me about three or three and a half hours.

The Years of Rice and Salt is an alternate history novel which speculates how the world would have developed without the influence of European Christendom. Some time in the 14th century, a mutant strain of the plague kills 99% of Europeans (instead of the historical 30-60%), effectively eliminating them from history, and leaving China and Islam the dominant powers on earth. The novel traces humanity's progress over the next seven centuries, all the way up to the Islamic year 1423 (which would be 2002 on the Christian calendar).

But Kim Stanley Robinson, very characteristically, never spells this all out. (Amazingly, KSR is often accused by other sci-fi writers of being prone to "infodumps," but I think this charge is ridiculous.) Instead, he tells the new history through the eyes of his characters, ordinary and extraordinary people who are only barely figuring it out themselves. The central character of chapter one, "Awake to Emptiness," is Bold, a Mongolian raider under the conquering Temur Khan in what would be the very early 15th Christian century. Bold takes a wrong turn and heads out into the Magyar plain (present-day Hungary), where he finds villages and entire cities completely depopulated by the plague, their buildings and cathedrals still ghostily in tact.

(Fearing that he has been exposed to plague, the Khan orders Bold's execution, but Bold flees. He works his way through deserted eastern Europe alone, down through Greece, where, on the brink of starvation, he is captured by Arab slave traders. He journeys with them down the east coast of Africa, where he forms a deep bond with another enslaved person, an African boy named Kyu. They are taken on the magnificent trading fleet of Admiral Zheng He (a real historical figure) to Hangzhou, where they are employed in a restaurant, until Kyu gets the idea... well, I won't spoil it.)

By the way, I haven't forgotten about the "alternate history" that's happening RIGHT NOW. Here's my 3-minute warm-up sketch of a man whose power-grubbing would give ol' Genghis a run for his money, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak:

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