Illustration No. 9 (Ninth of a Series)

SO ... WHAT? -- YOU EXPECTED A HORSE?

 

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       At last -- the Trojan Horse! Except termites never heard of horses or of any other large domesticated animal that can be ridden or used to pull vehicles.  I won't tell you what they actuallty came up with -- what that strange-looking object parked before the walls of Thel'or'ei is supposed to be.  You'll have to read the book to discover that!

       This is a recent version of the Trojan Horse subject.  I have another version, the second drawing I ever did.  It's pretty awful, although it has a certain interest, so I may present it here next.  (After looking at it again, I'm not so sure about that.)  When I drew the first one, I still had no clue as to how to use the vector drawing tools (I doubt I had even discovered what the Edit Points feature was all about), so it's a wonder it came out looking like anything.

       You will note that I originally intended this to be the cover for v.1.  (Also note that the title and author are couched in the original form, which was to omit my own name, as if it really were a 30th-century publication.)  I changed my mind and used the "Ki'shto'ba Stands Guard" picture instead because I never was completely satisfied with this drawing.  Now I kind of wish I'd used this, since the one I did use is a night scene and doesn't show very well on Kindle.  

        Here are some of the things that don't suit me about this drawing.  I had trouble with the perspective.  How large should the characters be in relation to one another?  The wall doesn't seem high enough.  Et cetera.  Also, the rocks don't look right.  I like the rocks on my other drawings, but these seemed to elude me.  I wanted a reddish glow from the volcano, but then the foreground rocks ended up looking like they had lava running down them.  I also think I should have used a different color for the typography -- the red doesn't show up very well.  And that cotton-pickin' stone wall needs better definition. 

       Otherwise, I do like this.  That's Za'dut capering around at the front, of course, and the pale- winged Alate is Ta'hat'a'pai (Cassandra).  And I'm sure you'll notice the Highest-Mother-Who-Has-No-Name, peering down over the shoulder of the volcano, watching her manipulations unfold, just as Zeus and Athena did in the real Iliad.