Plutonium
- PLUTONIUM - A color pencil drawing, size 8 x 8 on an 11 x 14 size vellum paper. It appears on the cover of, "Galaxy, March 1976," based on the story, "Plutonium," by Arsen Darnay.
This small "preliminary" color pencil drawing was submitted to Jim Baen, the editor of Galaxy magazine for his approval. I was looking forward to doing a larger, 16 x 20 acrylic painting of it, but I didn't have to, Baen decided the "sketch" was good enough to use "as is" and paid me the full cover rate.
The famous American Western artist, Charles Russell wrote, "To have talent is no credit to it's owner, what a man is born with he can neither take credit for, or the blame, It's not his doing". That's true, and to be successful it takes more than just talent, the world is full of unfulfilled talented people. I may have been born with a talent for drawing but I like to think that there were two conditions that were key to my being able to become a professional illustrator; The persistent effort I put into learning how to draw and paint, and my being in the right place at the right time. . .
The "right place" was the fan magazines where my early artwork was being seen. And the "right time" was the later 1960s through the 1980s when those fan magazines and fan book publishers paid for my artwork, as well as the few pro magazines that were still in print at the time; Amazing, Fantastic. If Worlds of SF, and Galaxy. They were my time and place to be an illustrator, and when they were gone it became my time to retire.
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