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In addition to building puppets I also enjoy drawing and other forms of visual art. I've posted some of my own work along with some of my favourite peices of art by other artists.
Fantasy Art
I love to draw, mostly fantasy characters or superheroes. Unfortunately I don't have much time for it anymore and most of it is unfinished, but if I had my wish I would draw for several hours each day. Below are some of my past favourite drawings based on characters that I've created for stories. It's a dream of mine to someday illustrate and publish several books.
   
Michael Whelan
In my opinion the most inspirational fantsy artist is Michael Whelan. His vast portfolio includes 8 remarkable paintings of Elric of Melnibone, a character from the series of novels by Michael Moorcock. One of the paintings from this series is my all time favourite work of fantasy art. It is titled Elric Demonslayer, and is seen below. I collect the Elric books with Whelan's artwork on the cover, but have yet to find the publication featuring this amazing work of art.
Here are all the original covers from the Daw publications (and yes, I did read all seven!). I've also included a variation for the cover of the final book in the series. All of these Daw books, except for book seven, contain illustrations by Michael Whelan depicting Elric or a map. Subsiquent publications by other publishers do not contain these illustrations.
       
Here are the few books I have found from the Grafton/Granada publications. These also featured Whelan's art on the cover (without the additional illustrations inside) however some of the images were used with a different title, and the art for The Vanishing Tower was replaced with my favourite Elric painting, mentioned above. The images used for the first book in the Daw set, Elric of Melnibone and the last book Elric at the End of Time traded places for the Grafton/Granada series. Note the modifications to the artwork for Weird of the White Wolf. Whelan discusses this in a book of his own artwork titled Wonderworks.
  
I found these two images of the Grafton/Granada books online. Note that the image for Elric at the End of Time is flipped so that it is actually a reverse image from the original painting. Not shown from this set are Sailor on the Seas of Fate and The Vanishing Tower.
 
Statues
Ottawa has many statues, though my favourite one in the entire city is the Angel by an unknown artist. There is a plaque on the wall behind the statue which states:
"The Angel was donated to the National Capital Commission by the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of Ottawa. It formerly stood on the roof of the mortuary chapel of Notre Dame Cemetery in Vanier. Though the artist of this elegant statue is unknown, sculptor Art Price restored the work and designed the base for its unveiling in 1987."
The Angel has since been relocated about twenty feet to the left of its original position due to a nearby tree that had grown and blocked the statue from view. A garden pathway and seating area with a water fountain was contructed at this time. The statue now has skillfully designed brickwork around the base along with two floodlights that liuminate the statue at night. When seated in one of the park benches across from the statue, an unobstructed view of the parliament buildings can be seen to the right.
  
My second favourite statue in the city is Sir Galahad infront of Parliament Hill in Ottawa, created in 1905 by artist Ernest Wise Keyser.
I found these next pictures online. Here is the famous statue of Perseus holding the head of Medusa, by artist Benvenuto Cellini. It is located in Florence, Italy. I have always been fasinated by the stories from Greek Mythology and Perseus is my favourite character.
 
Questions, please e-mail Mike Artelle at
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