James Wappel Miniature Painting: The Endless Voyage

Well, Cathy and I were lucky enough to get tuned into the live landing coverage of Curiosity just in time! It was an amazing thing. Very special.

I could not help but think what it would have been like to have that instant access "back in the day" when the Viking landers made it to Mars. I certainly remember how excited I was back then!

Astronomy has been a major interest of mine for as long as I can recall. Here's an example of an 8th grade Science Fair entry...

I think I managed to save some of my drawings from that display board. The blue flower wallpaper was not! To this day, I still have the HR diagram memorized :-)

That set me on a major Astronomy art kick, as I was inspired by Chelsea Bonestell and others. This was an image I painted in the mid 90's of a terraformed Mars called "In the Shadow of Olympus" It is the city of Tharsis, on the edge of a nifty ocean.

OK, so there are no plate tectonics, and minimal magnetic field protection...

My apologies for the small size of the images, and the watermarks. The original images are stored on a different computer.

Here is a tiny sampling of the spacscapes I have painted over the years. Now you know why I try to sneak them into my miniatures. :-)

This was called Fire Falls