Alternate Flying Methods

Flying figures are a common feature in Fantasy Art. Usually this takes the form of winged people or simply figures floating magically. So while melding over Fantasy images from my Facebook gallery "Victorian Fantasy Paintings", I thought I would show alternate forms of flying.

A beautiful Flying carpet painting by Vasnetsov.

Jose Segrelles paints a much more free form flying carpet.

"The Flying Islands of the Night" by American illustrator Franklin Booth.

Norman Rockwell's  illustration for "The Goddess and Private Gallagher".

Edward R Hughes paints a watercolor of an anachronistic Pegasus

Willy Pogany's film advertising art of flying by Genie.

A beautifully sensitive watercolor of riding on a Genie by Segrelles

By Gustave Dore, here is a frog flying on a kite. "Between Sky and Ground".

Frantisek Kupka drawing of a Griffin mount.

Flying on the back of ?  A painting by Maximilian Pirner.

W Heath Robinson watercolor of flying on clouds.

Using Costumes

Over the years I have made extensive use of costumes in my illustration work.  The better the costume, the more help it is in creating a good illustration.  Sometimes I have raided the thrift stores and resorted to re cutting and resewing my own creations.  But while I lived near Hollywood and did work for film advertising, I was able to make use of a great resource: Western Costume.  That warehouse contained many thousands of beautiful costumes created for and rented to motion picture production companies.

In a single large room dedicated solely to medieval male tunics I would paw through hundreds on triple story racks to find just the one I wanted for a book cover. Not cheap to rent, but worth it.

Below is a picture of one I chose which is being worn by "Rocketeer" artist and pal Dave Stevens for a book cover illustration.

The same tunic in the 1980's and 40 years earlier.

Some years later while watching Errol Flynn's "The Adventures of Robin Hood" I realized that from the myriad of tunics I had picked one from that film.  They kept them in good repair through the decades.