Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Mars Landscapes

For something a little different, here are some purely landscape images of Burrough's Mars. One of the things I find most interesting about his descriptions of the terrain are the vivid colors. He even describes colors that don't exist here on Earth. While that is impossible to convey visually, I do like the idea of painting the environment with very non-conventional colors, like yellow rocks, orange mountains and so on.
 And here is a page of Mars landscape rough marker drawings from my sketchbook.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Princesses

I've reread Princess of Mars a couple of times in order to fully grasp the awesomeness that Burroughs created in his fantastic creation. The dress of the main characters is often characterized as completely nude, but when you read the narrative carefully there is a lot of discussion of armor, silks, and furs. It is true that John Carter arrives butt-naked to Mars, but he quickly gets armor. In several passages the armor and dress are mentioned, I just don't picture the characters as running around nude through most of the book.
I've done several sketches of Deja Thoris with various amounts of dress. Here is a page from my sketchbook.