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"Solar
Wind"
Born
out of the original paperback book cover for
Larry Niven's book
"Protector" published by Futura Publications
in the late 1970's, the
above image is the ultimate manifestation of
what has been, in fact, a
series of related paintings. The cover image
created for the book
"Solar Wind" was an extrapolation from the
first piece prompted by
Roger Dean at a meeting with the artist at his
then Fulham Road studio
in London in 1979.
Roger
had suggested that the Protector image be used
for the forthcoming
Solar Wind Anthology published in 1980 by
Dragon's World but there were
copyright, contractual, and creative
relationship issues that made this
problematic and so, at the eleventh hour, a
cover painting already
created by the artist for the anthology of works
was put aside and there followed an intense week
in which the artist did not leave his basement
studio and worked round the clock to
create a variant of the Protector cover art.
As
the years rolled on, the sheer popularity of the
image became such that many
publishers wanted to use, and indeed commission
new variants of, the
various versions of the image but the version
created for the Solar
Wind book was deliberately never sold, or
licensed for reproduction, remaining a painting
kept exclusive to this
day by the artist and reproduced by nobody else
under contract.
The
Dragon's World edition of the book was extremely
successful but only scratched the
surface of the "Solar Wind Wind Picture Library"
a division of the
artist's company that housed, and still houses,
all the Solar Wind
copyright, and so eventually, as a contemporary
luxury edition of the
book came on to the market published by
Legendary Art Publishing, a yet
newer, and ultimate and final, version of the
image was needed as the
layout for the wraparound cover of the luxury
opus edition is bigger
and physically longer than the original 1980s
editions.
So it is that the above version
is the ultimate and quite possibly the very
final manifestation of the "Solar Wind" cover
art.
 The
artist is known for continually working on and
refining his visual ideas and
there were numerous drawings and colour sketches
produced over the years of the
Solar Wind character, a few of which we
show here,
a set of miniature paintings that tracked the
development of the
alien's crest, which evolved from a hollow bone
rendering (based on a
Toucan's crest) to the mid era variant which
added a sensory protrusion
and the contemporary variant which envisages a
"fully mature" crest
that houses a complete set of extra-sensory
capabilities as an extension
of the main brain core, an idea inspired by
meditating Yogis who, if they
mediate a lot, develop extra protrusions to
their skulls to house extra
physical growth of their brains.
The currently available luxury
book editions are here.
The main image at the top of the
page is the ultimate "Solar Wind"
collector's original painting, and you can
contact us about it here
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