Simon Coates' Traditional Illustrations

Life on Mars

I’ve been watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage on cable. I haven’t watched it in over 20 years.

http://www.carlsagan.com/

Of course Sagan has long since passed away, a real loss for us all, and fair to say back into being a part of the universe he loved. Ashes to ashes; as we are, as they say, all made of stars.

I did a sketch in an old notebook in the 90’s, right after Sagan died in 1996, and planned to develop it one day. So, thanks to Dr Carl Sagan’s inspiration, here it is.

Hopefully, one day I’ll see something like it in my own lifetime.

It’s been a long time since I’ve considered myself a spiritual person but this show is amazing; truly awe inspiring when you realize what a tiny little rock we live on, and how vast space is and how science really is more than a dry subject at school; it’s us and everything we see, know and even think to a degree.

The show’s production values have really dated, I was blown away to learn it was made in 1980. But somehow that’s part of its charm. This is also thanks to Carl Sagan’s remarkable mind and his laconic ability to bring the wonder of Astronomy to the layman. Even in the eighties I can recall doing my Carl Sagan impression and cracking my mate Nick up with it; he was the only other kid at school who seemed to also watch the show.

Original Sketch

Still Life: Lillies & Violets

More colour pencil on Canson paper; this time with oil pastel.

Hmmn, I realize better than anyone it's an artistic tradition, but It might be time to lay-off on the still life-posts for a while, and stick to painting Muriels...

Still Life: Diana Jug

I knocked this up last night whilst watching a John Wayne flick. A connection I'll explain presently.

Man, I'm really loving colour pencils at the moment; here's another effort on Canson paper.
The subject is a Jug by the Diana Ceramic Company of Bendigo (Vic, Australia) which is a well known pottery region in Australia, circa 1940.

My folks have owned two of them for years; inherited when my grandparents passed away. Only after I picked the dern things up did I read underneath "Grand Crest Whisky by Diana". After a bit of research on the net it turns out they were a promotion by the liquor Co. as water jugs for their whisky drinkers.

Hmmmn, that’d be right…

Oh yeah, my grandfather loved a scotch, and John Wayne, so it goes hand in glove...

Still Life: Skull & Matches

Colour pencil on Canson paper.

Just your good-old fashioned type we all used as children. I never would have thought as a kid you could render nice images with them; but perhaps that's down to the incompetent turkey's I has as art teachers at school.

Fruity

Oil pastel on el-cheapo drawing pad; I reckon the acid in the paper will give it a life of around twenty-forty years before those tell-tale yellow and brown spots appear.

What a cheery thought..? Oh well looks good though.

Mmmm; good enough to eat.

(Or to stick in a daquri...)

Drama

An old pen and ink drawing; always makes me think of a pose from a soap opera. Hence the temntative title DRAMA!

I still really love this drawing though; it seems so simple and honest, as corny as that sounds.

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-BATMAN!

I was sitting around the other day in a meeting doodling when I knocked up this pretty nice George Barris Batmobile with a piece of A-4 and a black biro.

It’s not totally accurate of course: it was done entierly from memory of the 60’s TV show, the ubiquitous 1960’s-70’s 1/43rd-scale Corgi toy (every boy had one), and the subsequent design in the comic book DC artists modeled after the TV one. And a few cartoon versions in there too.

Not bad I'd say, considering. As I'm always saying about these things; it make's me want to do a whole serise of Batmobiles and Bat-gadgets.

The 1968 DC comics version

It reminded me how much I loved the car, probably one of the main reasons I and thousands of other bat-fans chose Batman as their favorite Superhero growing up.

An early Illustrator image of mine of you-know-who

I loved the TV show; it was long off the air in the city in Australia in the 70’s, but visiting my Grandparents in Rural NSW, the first thing my sister and I would do after arriving in the afternoon was rush into their lounge room to watch Adam West and Burt Ward on local TV station 6,8 & 9 (longest channel name ever) as they duked it out with henchmen and a cavalcade of cheesy performances from guest villains.

Interestingly, any camp subtext was totally lost on us. We thought it was serious business!

Yet Another! I must be Bats-Man!

The Barris Batmobile has an interesting story all of it’s own.

In 1955, the Lincoln division of The Ford Motor Company designed and built a futuristic concept car called the Lincoln Futura. It was built entirely by hand in Turin, Italy at a cost of $250,000 and like many concept cars, was never put in to production. In the mid 1960's, George Barris of Barris Kustom City acquired the car for $1 directly from Ford.

Fast forward to August 1965, the all new and exciting Batman TV show producers approached Barris to have him build a new Batmobile for their upcoming program. The only catch was the car had to be ready for action in a mere three weeks. Seeing the bat-like qualities his Futura already had, he felt it was the perfect answer to the dilemma 20th Century Fox had created for him.