I’ve been doing a lot of data entry for my Day Job over the last week. By the time I’ve spent a few hours at it my brain is fried and my ability to sit and do art is pretty minimal. My back is just not happy with me. The one thing I’ve been able to do is scan art. So I’ll be able to start posting sketches and drawings again.

I’ve been pulling art out of boxes rather than sketchbooks. That means some of it will be more finished than what I’d find in the sketchbooks. Some, but, like today’s post, not all. This image is from 2002. It’s an illustration of one of the intelligent species in my Sentient 39 universe – a Trader.

The Traders live in an immense and ancient colony ship. Launched from a world in another galaxy, over thousands of years breakdowns in the radiation containment fields of the ship, resulted in the poisoning and death of the original builders of the ship. With no one to contain them the gardens and animal life brought by original builders grew and adapted and mutated and evolved. And eventually one of the species evolved enough intelligence to figure out that it was living on a ship and, eventually, learned to control and pilot that ship.

Now they travel from world to world, trading goods and services and information. Because they evolved without gravity they can’t ever land on the worlds they visit.

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I’m not posting any new progress reports today. Aside from a general lack of progress I’d like to get the info into some sort of spreadsheet so that it’s easier to read and update.

I’m also trying to get chores taken care of before I go see family up in Alaska on Tuesday. I’m not sure whether I’ll be updating this blog while I’m up there or not.