This is a painting I worked on over the weekend.


(The image links to a bigger version)

It is an illustration for a story that takes place in Rome, about 100 a.d. Obviously I've taken some creative liberties. I was raised in Houston, TX - and the scenery in this illustration was inspired by most of the surroundings I remember from my childhood - In particular, the waterside and tall buildings that always loom in the distance. Anybody who has been to Houston knows it is almost perfectly flat. So it might seem the mountains are out of place. On the West ``edge'' of the city is a large reservoir (The city has grown around it now, but it was an ``edge'' back then). When you're little, and grew up only knowing Houston, the man-made walls sure look like mountains. When I met my wife (she comes from Spokane, WA), I learned what real mountains are. The Houston ``mountains'' lost their magic. I drew them the way I remember them from when I was little... even though, in reality, they are probably only 16 - 30 feet high.

I think small childrens perception of things is always much larger than reality...but aside fromt hat you have done a great job getting this much done and one can see the formation of something really nice happening there on your canvas. Great that you have such a memory for these things.

That is a very neat image, great imagination.

I like it!

Amazing!

Thanks for the compliments, everybody!

@akky:
I'm one of those kinds of people who may not have a knack for remembering practical things, but I can tell you that when I was eight I had a dream where I was in a treehouse that had a ceiling fan mounted to the wall. Memory can be a very strange thing sometimes.