6) SHOW-AND-TELL

For those participating on ZOOM, today, we open the floor to any club members who have “fancraft” projects to showcase—sci-fi scale models, SF/F woodworking or needlecraft, whatever genre-themed, hands-on project it may be that you are working on at present, or have recently completed. Share your fancrafting experience with the group!

Those not equipped to join our ZOOM chat for the show-and-tell may contribute by using this post’s “Leave a Comment” feature to type in a quick description of any such project on which they are currently working or have recently completed.

7) ZDENEK BURIAN’S 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA ILLUSTRATIONS

Keith Braithwaite is on vacation this week, but offers the following discovery, which may be of interest to this group; Keith writes:

While combing the Web for paleontological art some years ago for a presentation I was preparing, I came across a series of beautifully rendered monotone illustrations by artist Zdeněk Burian, produced for an illustrated Czech edition of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Burian (1905-1981) was an influential paleoartist whose dynamic canvases depicting prehistoric life set the template during the mid-20th century for the reconstruction of dinosaurs. His work, portraying the ancient beasts as active animals, anticipated and later embraced the Dinosaur Renaissance before the thinking of scientists like Robert Bakker became widely accepted.

Applauded worldwide for his paleoart, Burian’s paintings graced several books on prehistoric life published in the 1960s and 1970s. My high school’s library stocked a couple of these, and that’s how I became aware of his work. But as I discovered decades later, he was also a prolific book illustrator, turning out hundreds of illustrations for Czech editions of adventure novels by such renowned authors as Rudyard Kipling, James Fenimore Cooper, Jack London, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But he most enjoyed illustrating Jules Verne.

His non-paleontological illustration work is not well known outside of his native Czechoslovakia (today, the Czech Republic and Slovakia). It should be!

Strikingly dramatic, painterly, and deftly crafted, the work that most captured my attention, of course, was produced for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and absolutely deserves to be seen by a wider audience. So, this is my small way of doing just that, showing and telling all of you about Burian’s extraordinary illustrations of the Verne classic. (Click on an illustration to enlarge the image.)