Tag: Art

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On ‘ownership’

In the course of a long post about Twin Peaks (of which I know nothing and cannot comment), Sheila O’Malley says this:

In today’s day and age, where every fan feels a sense of “ownership” over the thing they love – to an annoying degree – something like Twin Peaks was refreshing. Lynch/Frost knew the fan base was still there. That ground was set. But after THAT, they owed us nothing.

This is the proper attitude of artists. I realize that’s not a popular sentiment. But I am suspicious of popular sentiments, in general. More so now than ever.


I tend to agree with this. The most an artist owes is gratitude for good will offered their way, but that’s about it. This sense of ownership can become deeply obnoxious when fans start to turn on their particular artist because they haven’t been getting what they feel they are “owed”. Of course, this goes the other way, too: the fans owe an artist not a hell of a lot beyond an honest attempt to approach and engage with their work.

I think that art is best when there is less feeling of being “owed” on both sides.

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Revisiting cover art

The other day I noted, with some enthusiasm, an image that comes super super close to the kind of cover art I’d love to see for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). I did try to track down the artist by following Tumblr links, but…well, if you’ve ever tried to trace the path of a Tumblr image that’s been shared a bunch of times, you’ll know that “There be dragons there”.

Somehow, though, the artist found the post today, and left a gracious comment. Her name is Liza Van Rees, and she is a talented Dutch illustrator. Check her work out!

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Art in SPACE!!!

I saw these two images on Tumblr yesterday, and both put me in mind of Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). The first seems like an actual possible location from the book, so I’ll keep this in mind:

This one doesn’t fit anything specific from the book(s) at all, but it does convey, to me at least, a bit of the sense of adventure that I’m trying to partly capture with these stories.

The first image is sourced on Tumblr to here, and the second, to here.

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Thank you, Ralph McQuarrie

Ralph McQuarrie, conceptual artist for many films, died the other day. Every article and blog post out there cites his art that heavily influenced the eventual look of, among other films, Star Wars, and the frank truth is that without McQuarrie’s concept paintings, Lucas might well have never convinced any studio to bankroll the film in the first place.

Here’s a sampling of his work, via AICN:

Enjoy the stars, Mr. McQuarrie!

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