Well, so it DID get used eventualy (the cover on A&E 34).  I'm not crazy about that composition but I do like the way I set up the fight, with the one guy trying to trip the warrior while the other one bashes him from the side.  I think he was about to go boom there.

If you're asking whether I have the originals to the work that was published in The Dragon, no, I don't think I do.  I know I had the Mythos and Logos cover for a long time, but not any more.

Of those scan I posted, the last two were a couple of the otherwise unpublished ones.

As for "Oh, and was the 'Mythos and Logos' cover (TD #6) pretty much your only published color work? ", it was the only full color work I did under the Morno signature that was printed.  For the last things I did for Arduin, in 1980, I used a bizarre color process that involved lots of grey markers and a color wheel.  You didn't really know what the color version looked like till you saw it in print - you knew you wanted 10% cyan, 40% magenta, and so on, so you drew the seps on different pages, using a 10% grey marker on one, and a 40% grey marker on the other, and so on.

Color separations very very expensive back then, so most small press work was one color, maybe two.

I don't guess I was getting much work printed in full color till about 1986, when costs had started coming down.

You did that quality of work in your teens?

What are you creating now?

hi brad!

Just wanted to say how much I love your site. It is very slick and cool looking. How do you create your new work? Is it all digital?

I really like your website.

For me, the Morno style epitomized Arduin and the feel of many of the second party gaming publications of the era.

I never suspected that it was the work of someone my own age.

One thing that impresses me is the generally realistic portrayal of weapons and armor.  For instance in the drawing above, titled Into the Place of Mystery, the two figures are carrying weapons that could have been wielded by real medieval characters.

So many of the artists out there never seem to have seen a real weapon or suit of armor...and seem to have no idea how these weapons were used, carried or held.  (See my complaints about A Paladin In Hell, carrying his shield upside down.)

How did you acquire this level of knowledge about the details of weapons and armor when you were a teenager?

Mark  

MShipley88 wrote:One thing that impresses me is the generally realistic portrayal of weapons and armor.  For instance in the drawing above, titled Into the Place of Mystery, the two figures are carrying weapons that could have been wielded by real medieval characters.

So many of the artists out there never seem to have seen a real weapon or suit of armor...and seem to have no idea how these weapons were used, carried or held.  (See my complaints about A Paladin In Hell, carrying his shield upside down.)

How did you acquire this level of knowledge about the details of weapons and armor when you were a teenager?

There are an awful lot of people making fantasy art who have only ever looked at other fantasy art, so their ideas about what things should look like are pretty skewed.  The same's true of writers, who in many cases have never even considered how people actually lived in a medieval or ancient society and apparently don't even wonder about it; and in movies, where you frequently see people using shields only as a sort of counterweight for their roundhouse swipes with a sword.

There's no real secret to it - Id been interested in history and mythology for at least as long as I'd been interested in fantasy, and it was only natural to base the fantasy on things that actually had worked for people who lived in a similar way.  There's a reason all good boats look the way they do, and for the same reason, edged weapons look a certain way.  These are objects whose designs were honed (you should forgive the expression) over thousands of years of actual use.

You don't find historical swords with giant spikes sticking out of them, and it's not rocket science to figure out why.  You just have to give a damn.

In my early teens I'd been especialy impressed with Seamus Cullen's book "Armor" - its illustrations are terrific.  And if you'd started talking about King Arthur I'd have assumed you were talking about late Roman Britain.  Tolkien based his work on his knowledge of actual people's lives and beliefs, even though he took all of that knowledge into uncharted territory, and the art ought to do the same thing.

In that vein Alan Lee, who is a demigod, and John Howe are a gigantic leap past those Hildebrandt Brothers calendars we all had back in the day.

So, did you, like, kill Morno?  Can you never revive Morno again?  Seriously...not being sarcastic...if you did not sign something in 1978 does that mean that Morno did not draw it?  

If I had a D'Vinci painting I wouldn't care that the artist only signed it 30 years after he painted it.  That, in fact, would be a part of the provenance and cool backstory of the artwork.

Mark  

MShipley88 wrote:So, did you, like, kill Morno?

I hear Southpark when I read this.  

MShip is right. I don't think the signature is as important as the factoid of who the author really is. You can always provide a certificate of authenticity (whatever they are!) with the piece if someone wishes.

At any rate, take some pictures or scans of what you have and throw them up. You can either solicite private offers and organize them into a quasi auction or you can throw them up on ebay and let the system mete out the details. Either way give us a sneak peak. I can't stand waiting!

Your latest stuff is great. It is just too bad there isn't a way to provide originals with digital work. I guess I could always buy a poster...but you know what I mean, right?
2 great images....
http://shop.webomator.com/zooms/RadioTimes.html
http://shop.webomator.com/zooms/7Skies.html
And my absolute favorite.....
http://shop.webomator.com/zooms/Jeepers.html

Sorry for making you guys click. I didn't want to hotlink off Brad's bandwidth!

MShipley88 wrote:So, did you, like, kill Morno?  Can you never revive Morno again?  Seriously...not being sarcastic...if you did not sign something in 1978 does that mean that Morno did not draw it?

I suppose in a way, I did.  Morno was a very young guy who did work that has a very young quality to it, and a very seventies quality, I think.  So although I inherited his body and aged in it, I don't really feel that I'm that same guy.

And beyond that - although I know I could be wrong - it was my impression over here that most of you, since you're collecting the material we did back in those days, are mainly interested in the things that were done at that time.  So no amount of signing my work with that old name would make it any more interesting to most of the folks over here since it still wouldn't be that work that's your main interest.

I've really never even considered reviving the pen name, but this does give me some other things to think about, so I will .  And I'll see what I can dig up in my old files that might be interesting.

MShipley88 wrote:I like your recent stuff.  I also think you could find a market for your old style.
Mark  

Anything I did today, even in ink, wouldn't be in the same style.  It'd be better in some ways and maybe worse in others, but trying to do the same thing now would be false at best, and a sort of taxidermy at worst .