'Ralph McQuarrie Emulator'

This is kind of an intresting illustration (i guess)..but one i've always been shakey about. In the Spring of 1999..my teacher had assigned the class to pick out an example of a piece of fine art. Be it a 'Mona Lisa' type painting,classic or something current.. it HAD to be an actual piece of work and not a photo referance (if i'm remembering this correctly). I don't recall the exact purpose of this assignment. But we were supposed to replicate in graphite ..to the best of our ability the peice we had chosen. The decision was made to have me emulate this classic conceptual peice by Ralph McQuarrie for the original Star Wars.

A Tie Fighter Pilot (some of the coolest Stormtroopers) in his space craft's cockpit pursuing the Millenium Falcon during a battle at the First Death Star.

Obviously ..my piece is far more horrid compared to the vibrancy of the original (..aside from being in black and white..).This appeared in the original Art of Star Wars. I remember seeing this book in childhood. McQuarrie's work has appeared as early (and earlier) as his illustrations for CBS television's coverage of the Apollo lunar missions.

I fall prey to being one of his legions of fans as his work reeks of a classic and beutiful era. My favourite concepts he created were for E.T. .. but each S.W. and Indiana Jones concept has an almost pulp look to it. I dunno. He really did help shape the look of the classic trilogy of Star Wars. It even carries into the newer trilogy with Doug Chiang (another artist i've grown to care a great deal about) and his Star Wars prequal works. Chiang grows off a deep inspiration from much of McQuarrie's work.

So i dunno. I think me creating this is more of an insult to someone i really admire. But perhaps i'm loosing scope on what the project was actually about.

I recall this being an incredibly challenging illustration to complete. It took the coarse of over 4 days and was more than merely 'copying' the illustration. As much as i tryed to emulate the original composition.. the more i wanted to destroy my interpretation. I even got into a bad argument with my teacher over the whole thing and had seizures during the process. While it is kind of intresting to see how interpreted the original artwork..it's not one of my works i'm most proud of. I was not really used to duplicating soemone's artwork. I didn't even trace over old comic book pages or things similar. I ususally tryed to create the characters or pictures on my own. Ironically..this is one of my teacher's favourites.

The illustration is a bit large and was difficult to photograph. It had to be scanned..and cobbled back together with mixed results. I revised it slightly. It's still a very strange illustration to me. It's incredibly off. I would hope it does not count as a mockery to Ralph McQuarrie.

..graphite pencil on 20 X 30 " approx. Crescent Board,Tiled in Ph.shop and Firworks - Spring 1999,revised 3,October 2005