Sunday, November 29, 2015

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

by 
William O'Connor



I am very excited to be able to share some of the work that I have done for my latest illustrated book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

This project has been under development for nearly 20 years!  I first read the book in 1995 and immediately became fascinated with the exciting imagery that Verne described in the text.  My first interest in the story was to see how accurate Verne had been in his wonderful descriptions.  I was surprised by how different the text was to all the previous depictions that I had seen during my childhood.  The story of Captain Nemo was much darker and more mature than the children's versions that I had experienced.  Also, Verne's detailed schematics of the ship, equipment and locations were so specific I wondered if they could be rendered based solely on his writings.

Beginning with the design of the Nautilus itself, I mapped the schematics that Verne related in the text down to the last detail and discovered that they made for an extremely believable ship.  The design that I rendered was word for word with he text, making a lovely vessel that was true to the story.

In the late nineties I had enough artwork to shop the idea to several publishers.  My result was editors responding saying that they liked the artwork, but that they already had an illustrated version of this classic.  My endeavor however was to create a full unabridged and illustrated edition which had never been done before.  Despite the rejections from publishers I continued to work on the idea for the next several years on and off.

Around 2010 I struck upon the idea of a Steam Punk version, seeing that genre becoming popular with the public.  Re-reading the text again for at least the fifth time I produced detailed schematics and some new artwork with this theme in mind.  In 2011 Sterling publishing contacted me to let me know they were interested.  They too were interested in the fact that an illustrated unabridged text had never been available and we soon contracted the book to be completed.

The research and creation of the hundreds of pieces of artwork to be included in the book was daunting but enjoyable.  I wanted the book to have the same feel of the great Golden Age of Illustrations classics by Pyle and Wyeth.  It has been a long road to see this book come into production, but one that I hope the readers will appreciate as much as I did creating it.

Enjoy.

WOC

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Monday, November 23, 2015

The Gandalf Triptych-Part 6: Finish

by
William O'Connor


Finally Finished!!

Those of you that have been following the journey that I have been making with this painting for the past 6 months have been wonderfully supportive.  The Gandalf Triptych was completed and debuted at the Illuxcon Exhibition in October, and the reception they received was wonderful!  The set was sold to a private collector, and I shipped them off a couple of weeks ago to their new owner.

Its been many months since my last blog about this painting, because as I said, it would probably take as much time to complete the details as all the steps up to that point combined, which turned out to be true.  Details, Gold Border and Frames were all decided within the last month of the work.

I'm very pleased with the result.  This was a challenge that I gave myself to try to challenge what I could do as an artist.  Three paintings that would would work individually and as a set.  There were points in the process where I considered quitting, but I slogged through it and finished what I started. Posting the process with no knowledge of the outcome was an added challenge.  I learned a lot along the way, I hope some of you did too about the work that artists put into their creations.  The painting is the work, and the final product is only the veneer of the process.

Enjoy.

WOC

Gandalf Triptych Part1 Mines of Moria
©2015 William O'Connor

Gandalf Triptych Part2 Minis Tirith
©2015 William O'Connor

Gandalf Triptych Part3 The Grey Havens
©2015 William O'Connor



 all images and text are © Copyright William O'Connor and William O'Connor Studios