1113 - Whaleship Draft II

Not completely happy with the earlier version of the Whaleship, I went back to simplify my original concept of an upside-down dockyard strapped between two dirigibles.  Yes, it's been done before, but the visuals speak for themselves.  The Whaleship now looks like it's doing what it's supposed to do: be a gigantic airship cargo hub and a city in the sky. 

There's four Skookukway Carriers assigned to this particular Whalseship, and one Skook is undocked.  Also, there are several Sky Reaches running around as well.  

This picture reads well upside-down.  Not surprising, since I drew half of it inverted.  I like the dockyard being underslung, though, since it makes the carriers easier to load and unload, and it would be a spectacular place to work.  Dangerous, yes, but spectacular.  

1112 - Whaleship Sketch

Unlike the Skookukway Carrier and the Sky Reach, the Whaleship evades being drawn as my mind's eye sees it.  Probably calling it a Whaleship is a bad idea, since it limits the shapes I can use.

The Whaleship is a gigantic airship.  The buoyancy lifters are the huge bags on the flanks of the ship.  The livable area is the size of a skyscraper building turned on its side.  Skooks and Sky Reaches can access the cargo via the underslung dockyard.  I drew one of each for scale.  

This version is the intermediate between my two other ideas.  This one is whale-shaped, so it's got a nice organic visual appeal.  The more obvious idea is to take two zeppelins and duct-tape a sideways skyscraper in between them: that's been done before, but it might be a more feasible design.  The other idea is to make the buoyancy lifters be more like sails or wings so that the Whaleship looks more like a massive butterfly or moth.  The slender body would be dwarfed by the lifters, giving the craft unlimited buoyancy. 

1111 - Skookukway Carrier Sketch

JSVB Post #1111 - one of the easier post numbers to type!

More science fiction airship designs.  Around the same size as a Panamax cargo ship, the Skookukway Carrier is an intermediate hauler designed to bring a large payload to any point on the globe.  It's a bulk-break carrier that will manage loads from the larger dockyards and can ferry them to industrial sites anywhere.  A small fleet of Sky Reach trucks service the Skook, and allow tranfers from the airship to ground sites.

Skookukway is, as far as I know, one of the Salish words for "sun".  The sun emblem is on the bow of this fine ship.  

To see the Sky Reach, please click here.

1110 - Salish Sun

This is a Coast Salish sun symbol.  All I know about Salish design is that I know very little about Salish design, so instead of creating stuff straight out of thin air (and making a mess of it, click here to see what I mean) I simply aped a pre-existing design.  The original pattern was made by Darcy Day, all I did was make a few teaks.  Mostly, I just used Corel Painter's Mirror function to straighten up symmetry. 

1109 - Sky Reach Sketch

With the greatest of pleasure, I have managed to restore all function to my copy of Corel Painter 2015.  For future reference, if Painter drops out again because of a Microsoft Update, here is what I did that worked:

 

1) Make sure Patch 1 and the .Net hotfix are installed

2) Press SHIFT while booting Painter to activate the software switch to return the application to factory mode.  

 

Simple as that. 

 

Oh yeah, and I spent the day with Painter sketching out this science-fiction heavy cargo shuttle, which I am now calling the Sky Reach.  It's adapted to carry hexagonal-prism containers.  Hexagons are hard to draw in perspective!  

1108 - Burn Bucket

Here's a design for burning stuff in a galvanized steel bucket.  

For a few days now, Corel Painter 2015 has gone by the wayside thanks to a computer glitch I cannot fix.  So now I find myself attempting to draw things in Photoshop.  I know people do this, but for me it's an unintuitive application for drawing.  I treasure intuitiveness.  

1107 - Frustrational Thing

Today is the Thirteenth of the month, which is traditionally Ungood Art Day here on JSVB.  Might as well be a Friday the Thirteenth.  What an exercise in frustration.  

I was trying to make this object, but every line I laid just added to the mistake.  I quit before I got very far.  Sometimes, that happens. 

And now a Microsoft update has taken out Corel Painter, which has severely curtailed my workflow.  Aaargh!  Well, a quick chat with Corel confirms that a fix should be on the way, but that doesn't ease my frustration for now. 

I wish I was drawing a flamethrower, instead of today's mess.

1106 - Sunrise Logo

There's not much of the sun in this Sunrise logo, but that's not the point.  You may see this stamped on stuff I post later on JSVB.  It's just a watermark, like my signature. The font is Electroharmonix by Typodermic.

1105 - The Flame-Out

My lovely wife poses with my latest creation, called a "Flame-Out".  It commemorates today's witness to the dumping of the Calgary Flames from the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  To be fair, I did take this picture several days ago, which is why my wife is smiling.  I bet she ain't smiling now, but I sure don't want to go look just yet, at least not without the cocktail.

The Flame-Out is based on the popularity of the new avocado-based beverages: my wife loves avocado!  I followed what a local bartender was doing and made a couple of adaptations to fit what I have in my liquor cabinet:

THE FLAME-OUT RECIPE

1/2 ripe avodado, peeled and pitted

equal amount of cream

1 shot chocolate creme liqueur*

1/2 shot tequila

1/2 shot gin

ice

*Kahlua might work, but it would likely turn the drink brown.  The clear chocolate liqueur is preferred.

Beat the avocado and cream together until thick and frothy using a hand blender.  Pour into a martini shaker.  Add the liqueur, tequila, gin, and ice.  Shake until chilled and well-mixed.  Pour and enjoy immediately!

The flavour is light and creamy.  The tequila and gin both blend and accentuate the green, grassy notes of the avocado without making it taste like you're drinking an avocado.  

Of course, I live in Vancouver, so why not a Canucks cocktail?  Really?  You have to ask that?  I haven't tried this, but I imagine you could shoot it like Jägermeister:

CANUCKS' ABSINTHE FROM THE STANLEY CUP RECIPE

Umm, let's see:

1 shot absinthe

1 shot Alberta Rye ( as in why, Alberta, why?)

choke cherries

bitters

Throw all that in a tumbler and suck it down sometime between the final game of the regular season  and the end of the first round of the playoffs.  Best served with twins who aren't getting any younger and who are never going to be traded.  The sourness should be strong enough to last through basketball, baseball, and football season.  

 

1104 - Super Cobra 3301

The Super Cobra is a fighting spaceship a thousand years into our future.  It's based on designs by Frontier Developments, a videogame studio in the UK. I took it from my sketchbook and coloured it for fun.

1103 - Batmobile Iteration III

I'm not really a big fan of Batman.  I do appreciate his style, though, especially the campy show from the 1960's: that classic make-more-out-of-less ethic that came from penny-pinching television studios.  

The previous versions were set-ups so that I could mask out the various parts of the Batmobile.  Here, I've airbrushed in some detail so now the car looks more formidable.   

1102 - Batmobile Iteration II

More work on my Batmobile image.  You can see the car's basic shape.  The orange trim sure makes it look iconic, although I guess the bubble canopy is quite unique.  

 

It would have been a lot faster to just render this out using Photoshop, but I decided to lay all of the lines by hand.  The only concession is to mirror the vertical axis so that the car is at least symmetrical.  

 

 

 

 

 

1101 - Masked Iteration

Well, what do you think it is?   

If you guessed the front end of the 1960's Batmobile, you'd foil The Riddler for certain.  So far, it's just a simple blask mask which I drew based on my own measurements of the vehicle, or at least the chassis.  I needed it to be fairly accurate so that I could get the orange piping to look just right.  It's that line work that helps define the iconic look of the most recognizeable of the Batmobiles. 

Of course, this isn't finished at all, but I have high hopes that it will look pretty good when I am done.