Patrick Woodroffe, Mythopœikon: Fantasies Monsters Nightmares Daydreams – The paintings, book-jacket illustrations and record-sleeve designs of Patrick Woodroffe
1976 / Ebook / 147 pages / UK
***
The psychedelic LP and sci-fi paperback cover are two of my favourite artistic mediums, so it's always nice to see those overlooked artists represented. I've come across this guy a few times, but can't say his work has ever stood out, apart from a daft Budgie album cover I found quite funny but it turns out was supposed to be serious.
A budget career overview rather than a lavish coffee table book you can pore over, you can still rip it up to decorate your walls.
Faves: 'Triptych: The Thousand-Year Roundabout,' Michael Moorcock covers.
Paul Scanlon, Michael Gross and artists, The Book of Alien
1979 / Ebook / 112 pages / USA
****
Alien is one of several films from this era – along with Blade Runner, Star Trek I and Conan the Barbarian – that I really like, but mainly as worlds to get immersed in that occasionally get annoyingly interrupted by a plot. In devoting itself almost entirely to production design, this vintage making-of classic is right up my disconcertingly organic alley.
H. R. Giger's biomechanical designs are the obvious stand-out, but they've been widely reproduced elsewhere. I was more pleased to see Chris Foss' prelimary tramp steamers and "frustrated engineer" Ron Cobb's pragmatic interiors, both of which would be satisfyingly ripped off in Red Dwarf.
Wayne Douglas Barlowe, Expedition: Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 A.D. Voyage to Darwin IV
1990 / Ebook / 192 pages / USA
*****
Barlowe's infernal and extraterrestrial art has made for decent desktop backgrounds in the past, but reading these extensive 'notes' to each painting – in the form of speculative evolutionary fiction tying all of these fantastical fauna together in an extensively detailed ecosystem – is really enriching context.
It's my favourite bit from Cosmos expaned to book length and rendered like the dinosaur paintings that captivated me as a child. First-rate sci-fi world-building and even better art, all done by the same guy.
Faves: Emperor Sea Strider, Groveback
Faves: Emperor Sea Strider, Groveback
Walter Isaacson, Leonardo da Vinci
2017 / Audiobook/ebook / 600 pages / USA
****
This best-selling biographer knows how to economise a life and its works just right. I could do with less of the former, really – reading about the visionary genius murdering animals so he could draw them better and buggering teenage apprentices in his downtime is complex characterisation I didn't crave. I was here for the painting commentary and flying machines.
Fave: Lady with an Ermine > Mona Lisa.
