fanart, Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper

[ratcreature]

Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard & Steampunk!Puddlejumper
Media used: pencil, fine liner pen with waterproof indian ink, acrylic paint
Rating/warnings: G
Notes/comments: I did this for the prompt "Victorian steampunk AU" for the SGA fanart fest paintedspires. Admittedly mechanical pterodactyls aren't the most efficient way for a flying machine, Steampunk or otherwise, and not a very likely or even possible path technology would take from an SF standpoint, but this way was much cooler visually than merely changing the puddlejumpers with pipes or gauges or whatever. I mean, they more or less look like flying lunch boxes. Not really realistic technology, but this is Stargate after all, and I'm pretty sure John would think that mechanical, flying dinosaurs were cool.

The original is 30x40cm, so unfortunately I had to scan it in two parts, and you can see a slight line where I merged, because I fail at digital manipulation and didn't know how to make the two parts fit completely seamless.

Preview:



And because you can't see Sheppard that well in that size, here's a larger detail view:



If for some reason you want the whole image in a print resolution in its original size, I uploaded that as well, however at 300dpi and 30x40cm the file is over 4652x3500 pixel / 4mb: look at it in a really huge size in high resolution

Comments

[calcitrix.livejournal.com]

Ooh, that's neat! I love all the cogs and gauges and gadgets! And as for doing it in acrylic--wow! I completely fail at acrylic, no matter what I try. Nice work!

[ratcreature]

Thank you, it's great to hear the machine details work for you, I spent quite some time looking at engine explanations and historical machine photos so I'm happy that effort paid off. (Yay for children's lexicons on the history of technology, that was the book I found with the best close-up photos of many old engines and mechanical part rather than just showing tiny pictures of complete old machines where you couldn't make out the details, and it explained how everything worked too! *g*)

I'm still fairly new to acrylics, as this is only the fifth piece I used them to color (I started because my pet rats destroyed my tablet cable...) but I found them much easier than water colors, which I can never make work right. I mean, I use the acrylic paint mostly in thin glazes so that they give kind of a water color effect and only to color inked lineart so far rather than true painting, but I tend to think of the acrylic paint as "water color for dummies" because they won't dissolve again and you can just paint layers over each other until you have a color and shades you like, plus you have a white for highlights.