Moongate Art Nearly Finished

The main companion art piece for Through the Moongate, from Wing Commander and Ultima VII to Portalarium has its major drawing elements and is mostly colored in now. There are a lot of awesome Origin memories commemorated in one place here, and I love the Kilrathi and Dralthi bearing down on them all. Artist Manda has also added a thoughtful aside on how the lack of color potentially changes the image, which is an interesting concept. If you'd like to own a copy yourself, original project backers who supported the book have an option to add a cloth version of this painting for €30 by contacting author Andrea Contato.

The dragon’s breath and the clouds by the unicorn’s hoof are both a reference to a space vehicle launch. I want to remind those who have seen it, to recall what it sounds like. The Kilrathi’s snarl, the Guardian’s monologue game, and the star giving off a vast arching outburst of helium, are all meant to evoke tremendous noises.

While I can know how my picture will appear, more or less, on the book, I can’t automatically know how it might look if used (for instance) in a book as a monochrome illustration. This comes to mind because the first time I ever saw Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”, it was in a black and white book. So here is the painting almost done, and the color removed, but no other modifications whatsoever.

In art, color is actually a distraction. People who are color-blind can often see through green/brown/ black camouflage on fatigues. It does not work on them. Deer have very poor color vision in those ranges, and camo actually doesn’t fool them either. In a sense, everybody else is color-blinded.

Consider this snippet of my painting. What do you see? :)