"SEND YOUR SON TO MARS" (February 1988)
Multi-Media: charcoal, acrylic & guache. Another class of Carol's. We were to take an advetisement from some magazine and redo it. There was actually one with this name as the headline, perhaps a recruiting ad for NASA? The moon buggy was based on the actual one. The hand-held device was cobbled from some parts at work. The "weather station" under the glass dome in the background came from the 4th episode of LOST IN SPACE. The young astronaut was a self-portait.
Pencil. Clearly just a preliminary for a painting that never got done. My tribute to H.G. Wells & George Pal's ' THE TIME MACHINE, with myself in place of
Rod Taylor.
Acrylic & collage. One of my favorite art school pieces, this one actually did wind up in my finished portfolio, and on a promotional mailing I had printed up. Only a few months after this, I began writing my first new "GUN!" story in 9 years.
Pencils, photo-collage & acrylic. Inspired in part by the 2nd issue of Jack Kirby's THE ETERNALS, but with a sense of humor. The actual model used for the space ship still sits right here next to my stereo where it's always handy.
Acrylic. Another one I was rather proud of, intended as a book cover. I used myself and fellow student Betty Glick as models. Betty was a fun, outrageous personality who really stood out from the rest of the class. At the time, most of the students were 20, I was 27, Betty was 47. Her goal was to get into childrens' book illustration. I wonder if she made it?
Multi-media: crayon, pen & inks, markers. If you look real close, another self-portrait (of sorts). I was trying SO hard at the time to keep myself in a positive state of mind. The title comes from an Earth, Wind & Fire song (and album). I can see in the architecture here a precursor to my later STORMBOY comic-book.
Acrylic. I forget if there was any specific criteria for this one. Another portrait of Gina, though in a dark, fantasy sort of mood. The name comes from a question she once asked me when I walked into the classroom and found her sitting in MY seat. It's obvious she was trying to get my attention...
Acrylic. A very large piece. The publisher that was putting out John Gardner's JAMES BOND 007 novels in the 1980's used a very simple, "graphic" design with no illustrations. I wanted to see what I could come up with for the 7th book in the series, a rather dark one about a religious "cult" leader and his horde of mindless followers. 3 of my classmates, Susan, Ken and Denise, agreed to model for me, I think I managed to capture their likenesses quite well here. One of these days I really should import this into Corel Draw and add text to it.
Multi-media: pen & ink, colored pencils, acrylic & typewriter. An ad for Apple Computers. I was inspired both by my background as a mechanical draftsman, and early computer images. Ironic that this was all done by hand! Don't miss the "notes".
Oil. While at first it seemed like it could have/should have been an "easy" medium to work with, I never could get the hang of oil paints, and decided to just stick with acrylics (at least, for awhile). Mostly just a learning exercise that got more frustrating as it went, I believe I used Betty as a model here again. At some point, I gave up trying to "smooth out" the paints any better, threw up my hands, and then added the little slobbering alien and his "wok"-shaped UFO in the background. Now THAT was fun!
(Continued in Part 5)
More as I go!
All Artwork Copyright (C) Henry R. Kujawa
The Time Machine, The Untouchables, Scorpius and Apple Computers are all the properties of the various Copyright holders.
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