Solar
              Wind Heroes & Villains Oil Painting and Limited
              Edition Print of a roleplay game illustration


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The ultimate collectors luxury edition. Limited edition, giclee printed, handmade, paint encrusted hardback cover, wraparound dust jacket, original archive drawing in the title page, presentation box artist signed.
Buy Jupiter (and other stories)
(From the book "Solar Wind Vol.1")
By : Deborah Susan Jones : Editor
Isaac Asimov's humorous short science fiction story was first published in the May 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction, an American digest-size science fiction magazine, initially published from 1957 to 1958 then revived for a brief run in 1969 and 1970 and then Peter created the cover for the UK paperback  of the same name which was in fact a collection of 24 short stories ranging from 1950 to 1973.
The original title of the story was "It Pays'", which was Asimov's own title which was replaced with "Buy Jupiter" by Venture's editor at the time, Bob Mills and later, in 1975, Panther Book's editor, Nick Austin, brought it all together as a collection and Panther's Art Director, Steve Abis, commissioned Peter to create a "space hardware cover" which was the lead edge of Panther's SF marketing stance in the mid 1970s.
Peter Andrew Jones Solar Wind Book
                Panther Science FictionOne of the very first "hardware" covers Peter created, he was naturally keen to establish his own style for what was, undoubtedly, a Chris Foss dominated market at the time of Peter's entry into the genre. His description of his reasoning at the time was >
"It seemed to me, that with the moon landing and the whole NASA assertion that the public, even niche SF fans, would have a core set of images in their mind as to what a real spaceship looked like, even if set in the future, and remember, Asimov's stories in some cases dated back to the 1950s, so I set about designing a long distance ship that on the one hand was classic yet contemporary in feel  whilst big enough in size that it had to relate to future space travel".
Technically, it was one of the first paintings painted on hardboard. Previously works had been on stretched paper mounted on mount board, the typical "art school" method of the time born out of his training at St. Martin's School of Art, but this was proving problematic since the illustrations, when sent through the "art director to editor to photographer to printer" pipeline, and back again to the art director's office, was often a potentially damaging one and indeed, one painting was cracked across the top half which triggered a need to change the creative and presentation process.
"I noticed a comment by Frank Frazetta in an interview at that time that he painted on "Masonite" which meant absolutely nothing to me since it was a proprietary brand name in the USA for what I assumed we called hardboard but with a bit of detective work looking closely at photos of Frank holding his paintings it seemed to me that it was some sort of wood panel, and probably an easily obtainable and relatively cheap but durable product, so I just assumed that hardboard would be a suitable UK version of the kind of support he was painting on. In any event, be that as it may have been, or not, that was my interpretation so I set about locating a supplier, a hardware store off Putney High Street in South West London near where I was living, with my parents at the time, and ordered a set of panels, cut to book cover proportion and 'three times up" in size (to use the industry slang of the era) to facilitate getting enough detail into the image. The shop did an immaculate job, perfect, delivered a big batch of panels to me and, overnight, my working process shifted from painting  on paper to that of wood panel".
"It wasn't a creative choice through preference, it was a practical change to protect the longevity of my work, especially the need to ship it back and forth to my own photographer for "shooting on tranny" (photographic 5x4 inch transparency) for building what was to become "The Solar Wind Picture Library", my own picture library and licensing agency."
"Heady days . . . . . . . . . . . "

Deborah Susan Jones

Peter Andrew Jones Handmade Frames
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