A trip to the Moon

Well, this is the third time I've tried to write this post, the first two attempts spiraled into the political domain, but I'm not sure that anything can be written on Burroughs Moon trilogy without at least touching the political realm as all three books in the trilogy deal heavily with communism and religion. To avoid voicing my personal opinions on politics I will try to avoid the second and third books in the trilogy, The Moon Men and The Red Hawk, and focus on the first book in the series, The Moon Maid.

The Moon Maid deals heavily with religion and reincarnation, and the story begins with “Julian” relating the story of his ancestor, the hero of the tale, Julian the 5th of the International Peace Fleet and his accidental voyage to the moon. To quickly sum up the beginning of the story, the earth launches a ship, the Barsoom, in the hopes of visiting mars, however, before they can pass the moon a rival of Julian the 5th, one Lieutenant Commander Orthis, sabotages the ship forcing the crew to make an emergency landing on the moon. In the process of landing the ship is caught in a “lunar whirlpool” and sucked into a crater and find that the interior of the moon is hollow and capable of supporting life. On investigating the crew encounters the first of the Lunar races, the Va-gas.

The Va-gas are interesting, they are semi quadrupedal carnivorous “horse” men. Burroughs describes them as four limbed with long thick necks and travailing on four legs but fighting while standing bipedally. The description that Burroughs gives is very difficult for most artists to render, most of them depicting them much like centaurs. J Allen St. John was the first artist to depict the Va-gas, even he shows them as centaur like beings; the inaccurate artistic depiction of the Va-gas may in fact be due to the way J Allen St. John originally painted them. I decided to try and depict them a bit closer to Burroughs description.

While this is closer to Burroughs description it's still not accurate, it is exceedingly difficult to depict the Va-gas the way Burroughs describes them. When I draw a primitive or exotic race I prefer to do a lot of research to establish an overall look for the race. Barring access to research material I tend to fall back on what I know, for the Va-gas I used the eastern woodland Indians as a starting point and added a bit of fantasy to spice it up.

This one is a bit closer to the description, I tried to follow Burroughs anatomical description as closely as possible on this sketch, but in all honesty his description doesn't work. I found that if Burroughs description is followed to the letter what you wind up with is a creature that looses it's edge of fear, or intimidation, and winds up just being ridiculous.

I posted some small Kalkar head sketches recently, but as I was digging through some old sketchbooks I found this guy

This version of the Kalkar is more appropriate for the second book in the series, The Moon Men, but it seems to be the only Kalkar drawing I've done that is more than a simple head sketch.

Julian the 5th, the hero of The Moon Maid, is a standard Burroughs hero, young and strong with a solid code of ethics and a lack of fear that edges on suicidal ideation. Near the middle of the book Julian is captured by the Kalkars and taken to Kalkar City No. 337 and imprisoned within. Julian is a Burroughs hero, so no prison can hold him. He escapes from the Kalkars and makes his way to the city of Laythe where he becomes Ju-lan-fit'

I had some symmetry issues with this picture, all around it was a bitch to draw, which is probably the reason I didn't finish it, but it came out pretty well; it did remind me of why I don't do more backgrounds though.

The Moon Maid doesn't really have an ending, it just kind of stops. This was a technique that Burroughs used many times and in most cases it's obvious that the story/book was written either as a prologue or with the intent of continuing the story as a series. There are some cases however, like in A Princess of Mars, where it just seems like he couldn't figure out how to end the book. The Moon Maid was intentionally written as a prologue to The Moon Men. The Moon Men was originally a written as a piece of political fiction titled Under the Red Flag, it was written in 1919 shortly before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. It was Burroughs outcry against the communism that the west was allowing, and in some cases encouraging, to take hold in Russia. Burroughs publisher refused to publish Under the Red Flag, this was apparently due to the publisher not liking some of the statements that Burroughs made in the book, but Burroughs intended to have the book published one way or the other and made the decision to rewrite it. He turned it into a Sci-Fi novel by changing the Bolshevik antagonists into the Kalkars and moving the setting from Russia to the U.S. It seems that the changes to the story required a more in depth lead in than could be accomplished by simply adding a chapter, so The Moon Maid was born.

At the Earth's Core

Of all of the worlds created by Edgar Rice Burroughs my favorite by far is Barsoom, his version of mars, a close contender however is Pellucidar, the world at the earth's core. I enjoy Burrough's Barsoom stories because I find them visually interesting, they're filled with multi limbed animals, rainbow hued martians and naked people. It's this visual interest that also draws me to Pellucidar.

Pellucidar is inverted, the land masses and oceans are reversed from the surface, our land masses are their oceans and their land masses are our oceans. The World of Pellucidar is perpetually lit by a small glowing orb that floats, without moving, at the center of the world. Burroughs' Pellucidar is a caveman wonderland, he created a world where humans on several different planes of evolution interact with each other and coexist with prehistoric mega-fauna and dinosaurs. A rough summary of the first Pellucidar novel, At the Earth's Core, consists of David Innes, a mining heir, and his inventor friend Abner Perry accidentally traveling to the earth's core in a giant drilling machine and becoming trapped there.

The first two or three books in the series take place in an area of Pellucidar that is controlled by the Mahar, a group of evolved pterosaurs with psychic powers.

It's interesting how precise Burroughs was when describing the Mahar, specifying that they appeared to have evolved from the ramphorhynchus.

The Mahar use a group of gorilla-like men called the Sagoth as slave drivers to control and capture the humans. I find the Sagoth to be a bit confusing and difficult to portray. While Burroughs describes them as gorilla like in appearance, he also suggests that they evolved from the same race of ape, the Mangani, that raised Tarzan. Burroughs gave the apes that raised Tarzan a language, not an ape language of grunts and hoots, but a spoken language. Tarzan's ape mother was named Kala in their language, and she gave Tarzan his name. On a side note, in his fictional biography, Tarzan Alive, Phillip Jose Farmer suggests that the Mangani might be a surviving group of Australopithecus. Due to their apparent evolution from the Mangani I have a tendency, much like Frazetta, to draw them more like Homo habilis.

Homo habilis however, doesn't say gorilla man to me, it says ape-like human. Oh well, sometimes you need to take some artistic license.

One of the first human inhabitants that David Innes meets is Dian the beautiful of Amoz. Dian differs from most of Burroughs' women, although she is kidnapped several times in the series, she is far more capable than most of the females he wrote. In this way she is reminiscent of Jane Porter from his Tarzan novels, they are both willing to get their hands dirty and, if need be, fight.

This is obviously unfinished, I like the way it was coming along but it was causing me some problems that I couldn't work out at the time. Looking at it now, I think I would be able to salvage it if I set my mind to it.

I wish that I had found the Pellucidar novels when I was younger, I would have loved them when I was 8 or 9. Dinosaurs, cave bears, psychic pterodactyls, ape men, pirates, hey, I love them now. Who wouldn't?

Mars

In 2004, I decided to embark on an artistic mission that has yet to be completed. I declared an intent to draw a literary history of Mars, in other words, I intended to draw the main creatures, or characters, from all of the classic Sci-Fi novels about mars. I have managed to finish exactly one drawing. I have stacks of unfinished drawings that I stopped for one reason or another, and I have stacks of concept sketches, but for all of that I have completed one drawing. I have no idea if I will ever fulfill this mission I have set forth for myself, but I will continue to trudge along and perhaps 7 years down the road I will find myself with another completed drawing.

For the meantime, here's the one drawing I have completed.

This is Tars Tarkus, Jeddak of Thark.

I have more unfinished drawings and concept sketches of characters from Burrough's Barsoom than any other version of mars. Oh well.


Just for fun, here's a mostly complete list, in chronological order, of the classic Sci-Fi novels that take place on, or revolve around mars.

Across the Zodiac: the Story of a Wrecked Record, Percy Greg
Uranie, Camille Flammarion
Plunge Into Space, Robert Cromie
Unveiling a Parallel ( also called, A Parallel Unveiled): A Romance, Alice Ilgenfrizt and Ella Merchant
Journey to Mars, Gustavus Pope
Daybreak: a Romance of an Old World, James Cowan
On Two Planets, Kurd Lasswitz
War of the Worlds, H.G Wells
Edison's Conquest of Mars, Garrett Serviss
Gullivar Jones: His Vacation, Edwin Arnold
Under the Moons of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs
Out of the Silent Planet, C.S Lewis
A Martian Odyssey, Stanley G. Weinbaum
The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury
Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

Tarzan

Well, it's been a couple of days since I posted anything. It seems that when I start typing I tend to get carried away, due to that I've got three unfinished posts that went wild and turned into six-thousand word essays. I'll try to keep this one shorter.

The name Tarzan inspires images of Johnny Weissmuller, Gordon Scott or Lex Barker grunting “Me Tarzan you Jane”, and brings to mind one of the most recognizable calls/yells ever recorded on film. While these images may be the archetypal representation of Tarzan they aren't much like Burroughs original ape-man. The closest any film has gotten to Burroughs original depiction of Tarzan was Christopher Lambert's performance in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, while Lambert's depiction of Tarzan is closer to Burrough's vision the writers of the film took some liberties with the original story. It's been quite a few years since I saw Greystoke, but from what I remember a rather large portion of the film deals with Tarzan/Lord Greystoke attempting to acclimate to living outside of the jungle. I believe he fails to adjust to “modern” society and returns to the jungle. Like I said, it's been awhile since I saw the movie, close to ten years, so this is probably not quite what happens. Regardless of the inaccuracies in the Legend of Greystoke, the writers managed to depict a Tarzan that could speak in more than broken, cavemanesque, pidgin-English. By depicting Tarzan as an intelligent man, capable of learning and adapting, the writers of Greystoke presented a Tarzan that was closer to Burroughs vision than most have managed. This is also the Tarzan that imprinted on me the hardest.

I was exposed to Tarzan at an early age, mainly through the children's books of the 60s/70s and Johnny Weissmuller films of the 30s and Lex Barker and Gordon Scott films of the 50s. This was the Tarzan that I knew until, at around the age of 8, I saw Christopher Lambert's performance in Greystoke. There was something about Lambert's version of Tarzan that just seemed right, something about the violent, animalistic Tarzan that called to my 8 year old psyche and screamed “this is Tarzan, this is the real Tarzan”. Greystoke is the reason that I depict Tarzan the way I do, scarred, grizzled and always on the edge of violence; to me this is the real Tarzan.

About four years ago I picked up a copy of Tarzan of the Apes, I'm a huge Burroughs fan, but it had been years since I had owned, or read, any Tarzan books and I thought it was time I fixed that. The version of Tarzan presented above was inspired by Burroughs description, my insane need to research even the tiniest piece of clothing and the vision of Tarzan that I had developed from Greystoke. The majority of Tarzan of the Apes is set in the Congo and has Tarzan wearing clothing, and using weapons, stolen from the local tribes. The loincloth and jewelry that I have depicted here are copied after pieces from a mix of tribes from the Congo region. I've done other versions of Tarzan, this one however, comes closest to the picture in my head. This piece has yet to be finished, it's odd for me to want to add color to one of my drawings, but I felt that this one deserved some deep red to better portray the blood dripping from his hand. This may get finished, or it may get redone, I'm not sure, I like it but the more I look at it the more I want to change.

Of the female characters in the Tarzan stories, I believe La of Opar is probably my favorite. She allows a certain amount of artistic freedom that I enjoy. La was from an ancient race similar to the Atlantis, so it allowed me to mix some various styles to achieve the level of opulence and degradation that I felt was appropriate for the Oparians.

This, like the Tarzan pics above, is not finished. I am considering finishing this piece, but I think I'll have to spend more time looking at it before I decide.

After reading Tarzan of the Apes a few years back, I got into a Tarzan kick and wanted to read more. I wound up scouring Amazon until I found The Great Book of Tarzan. I have mixed feelings about this book, while it contains every Tarzan story written by Burroughs and was amazingly cheap, it was like $15. I don't suggest this book to anyone, the binding is the worst I've ever seen, the editing is bad and the layout is so bad that it's difficult to tell where the chapters or books end. I got about halfway through the book before I gave it up, the book was just too difficult to read. If you're interested in reading the Tarzan novels I suggest downloading them for free from Project Gutenberg , they don't seem to have all of the books, but they have most of them and they're well edited and easy to read.

Loose sketches

I do a lot of loose sketches, a lot. I have a habit of sketching heads or busts of characters from stories that I'm reading, it helps me keep my mind on the story and it helps me to mentally solidify the characters. Most of these are less than 6"x6".

These first two are sketches done while reading R. E. Howard's Almuric.
Random male Yaga.

And the Yaga's black queen Yasmeena.

Next up some Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Very rough preliminary head sketch of a Kalkar.

A slightly cleaner head sketch of a Kalkar and some random woman.

And who can forget Tarzan. Here's a couple of head/bust sketches where I was trying to work out what my version of Tarzan would look like.

Sometimes I decide that one of my character head shots are too much fun to go to waste. Once I have an idea of what the character looks like (and I'm sure that I can replicate the look), I start doing fast preliminary composition sketches, this is what those sketches look like.

This picture however, never came to fruition.


This is a slightly more refined sketch, this was going to be La of Opar.

This is about the level I take a drawing to when I'm going to transfer it for inking. Like the sketch above this one was never finished, it just wasn't quite opulent enough for my tastes.


And lastly we have Deja Thoris.

I got about halfway through this before I decided that I didn't like what was going on with her ass, and no, you may not see her ass, I didn't like it so it got cropped out. This is part of the drawing is about half to two thirds finished. Who knows, in the future I might finish up this section and try and do some “artistic erasing" to see if I can crop it down into something useable.