enigma alien • x.29

I ended 2012 and began 2013 working on the enigma aliens. Two of them are small oil paintings which are going to Gallery Nucleus as part of a show next month. I've only posted a couple very early progress photos of them over on Facebook, but I can share this enigma alien extract now. It grew from a small sketch that I drew when I was trying to decide what the second enigma would be. Not this one, it turns out, but I liked carrying it forward as one of my acrylic on watercolor paper extracts. I hope you do to!

acrylic on Arches 300 watercolor paper 8" x 10"

alien evolution

In 1974 (or there about) I did this drawing of a guy who I named "Neptonian". A lot of the inspiration for this character came from the Outer Space Men toy, Astro-Nautilus (with a bit of Star Trek the Animated series thrown in). I still remember drawing this and how much fun it was to do.

Seventeen years later I was still painting aliens. This one was done as a book cover for the James White novel the "Genocidal Healer" in 1991.

Astronomer • alien menagerie #4, was done eighteen years after "Genocidal Healer" (thirty-five years since the "Neptonian"). I'm still painting aliens.

*it's still a really enjoyable thing to be doing