Question: How come whenever I draw Earl, he's always wearing a Star Trek Federation uniform?
Answer: How come Earl doesn't wear a Star Trek Federation uniform all of the time?
For my 100th JSVB post, I present a glimpse of the future: 1/24th of a second of the 23rd Century, "rebooted" on account of Kirk, Spock, et al. Here we see a young and confident Lieutenant Earl at his station on the bridge of the USS Encounter, patrolling the Laurentian system. This image was rendered sometime before Earl assumes command of the ship at a later Stardate.
Okay, I should have sounded a Geek Alert. Back in the day, I was quite a Star Trek aficionado (still am, I guess), but my friend Earl came to believe in the show. Not so much in the phasers and photon torpedoes which seem to dominate Trekkie thinking these days, but more the bold and honest adventure of humanity as we come to embrace the cosmos (and the occasional green bikini model). Being a writer, Earl used his fictional USS Encounter as a location for a series of short stories. He was playing around with wordcraft, and honing his writing skills for his political career today.
After the big Star Trek motion picture came out a few months ago, I asked Earl if he was interested in "re-booting" the USS Encounter. Look a the the sweet way the Enterprise ship and crew got a near total work-over in the new movie. However, Earl said no. Had he said yes, I would have made this painting at that time, instead of waiting until now.
Blogger will probably reduce the art to a postage stamp, so I include an enlargement to show paint strokes. Enhance, enhance:
I did use some public-use private photos to help compose the scene, plus one frame of the J.J. Abrams ode to lens flare. That frame is credited to Paramount Studios, but I did re-work it a fair bit.
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