This is the only picture I have scanned in on this computer at the moment, but it's a good one. Never got around to finishing it, the blue blob in the corner was going to be a nebula with stars inked in, but moved on and never came back. If one day I finish it, I will post it here for comparison.
This particular piece is a translation of the old 19th century maritime woodcuts of giant sperm whales wrestling against giant squids. But in space.
The background -
During the summer of 2008, I was doing a lot of pyschedelic drugs. At this juncture of the story, I was out in Southern California visiting my best friend Max and his friend Lauryn. Max and I were heading to Comic-Con, and caught a ride with Lauryn down to San Diego. We began the day with a couple hits of acid and adventured around UCSD - a story for another time.
After a good trip around the balmy and beautiful modern architecture of UCSD we went to stay with Max's step-father's mother, Jopi - one of the most down to earth and relaxed individuals I have ever met. Unfortunately, due to the strength of the acid and a long day in the sun combined with Jopi's thick Dutch accent, I was far from social functionality. I wound up making an ass of myself, which bothered me to no end until I realized that Jopi didn't care, she was just happy to have me there.
We conversed with Jopi for a few hours, but she was off to the Pops! (classical musical concert.) Max and I decided that we would take another couple of hits of acid and trip around Jopi's extremely protocol (def: conducive to good living) house. Cranking the Orange Goblin we talked about psychedelic seers traversing the desert, the nature of distortion and perception regarding psychedelic insights, and hammered out what it took for good living. This list later became 'Grandma's Good Living Protocols' - which is another story for another time.
As the night wore on we sat out on the upstairs balcony, which overlooks La Jolla Bay and the tranquil ocean. We slept under the stars that night, which looked like stick and ball models of complex organic molecules. We debated and discussed the important issue of vampires vs. werewolfs - deciding that while vampires were classy and multifaceted with many cool archetypes, werewolves were just plain shit-wreckers.
Towards the end of the night, as the clouds rolled in over the bay, I expressed to Max my deep fear of the ocean combined with my fascination of marine biology. We compared the deep blackness of the ocean to that of the cosmos - and in that comparison we imagined pods of whales on the same scale singing a haunting song throughout the universe. Behind them trailed dust, planetesimals, perhaps even worlds inhabited by life. But perhaps civilizations lived upon the space whale like the ancient legend of the zaratan turtles.
Max revealed to me that he wasn't satisfied with engineering - that he wanted to be an illustrator. We both committed to each other not to let our scientific careers get in the way of our art - and my first drawings of the space whales came soon after.
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