The images in this part of the gallery were all done on a 128K Mac or an SE30 in the early to late 80's. The tiny screen, the jaggies, but it was all bright and shiny and new and state of the art. I loved it instantly-- sure, you could do some of this stuff on a CADR, but it was annoying. Here's a bunch of stuff from a recently exhumed Stuffit archive.

Establishing Context: Room for Rent

Here's an ad for the old house in Brookline where I lived with HGA & Devon. Yes, it's ancient-- note my email address.

Story Reading: The Invites

The Boston Story-Reading group is still meeting on Monday nights and still going strong. A first-generation offshoot of the Yale group, sibling of the Palo Alto group, cousin to the Berkeley group. Way to go, Leon & friends-- an enduring institution you've started!

This group of invites are the only ones I can find of the many I did; somewhere there's the infamous "4 axis of story reading" photocopy art out in a box somewhere; maybe I can find it and add it to the "scan me" pile...

• Story Reading: It's a Fish Eat Fish World
• Story Reading: Oh No, Not Again
• Story Reading: Generic Invite
• Story Reading: Jungle Tales of Story Reading
  

Eggs

Space opera, ho! Once an Edmond Hamilton fan, always ...

Scooters vs. Smilies

The inestimable Devon McCullough (devon@iac.net) creates Art par Ex in the days of the early Mac; while not created by yours truly, such a classic that it deserves a place here.

Andy's Thesis Problem

Andy's hotdog cart was a fixture under Bldg 36 from at least 1981 (when I arrived as a frosh) until 1988 when I left town for the first time. While ill health forced him to delegate the cart much of the late 80's, his presence was still very much felt. I brought him a copy of this, which he posted on his cart on the spot. It persisted to a ripe yellow old age, with perhaps a chili stain or two.

Birdie

Texture fill freehand. Silly bird picture.

Contemplate the Carrot

A bit of a departure from my usual style; in fact, sometimes I wonder if someone else did this, but too many details match-- sketching style, some of the title letters, etc. Wish I'd done more like this.

Dino-n-Coon

Mouse resolution test via cute sketching. I wanted to see how the mouse tracked for sketching and wondered out loud what I should draw. "A dinosaur!" and "A raccoon!" came simultaneously from different parts of the room. No problemo...you really can please all of the people some of the time...

Draper Labs

Texture fill, back when it was new and shiny. Once in the mid 80's I was walking from Central to Senior House the back way and cut through Draper/Tech Square. There was a late model grey sedan with 4 dark-blue suited passengers, and a 6 foot antenna coming out of the trunk. It kept coming. By the time it was 12 feet up in the air and still going, I had successfully done an emergency detour around the building, deciding I didn't want to be anywhere near whatever was going on. I hope things there are tamer these days.

Fnord.

Yeah, the eye should be more toward the top. Eh.

Rose Garden Translations

Some fun little early Mac shareware called (I think) CrystalPaint, one of the first ones to offer "fun with virtual mirrors", was used to author a basic garden motif, which was then put through several transforms to create a more complex image.

• Image One: rose garden
• Image Two: Divergent path One: inversion
• Image Two: Divergent path Two: many tracings
• Image Three: galaxy

Trouble

Bit rot-- or is that, "bit splat"? As we all know by now, at least one person (and probably more) actually have been fired for buying IBM. This graphically stimulating prediction should have been featured in fine supermarket checkstand news publications as a genuine example of clairvoyant prognostication, but alas, a passing space alien abducted my inside copywriter.

Turnabout...

...is fair play, especially in video games, where the average player suffers more frequent and dramatic reversals of fortune than the average protagonist of epic Greek poetry.

With Cream

"I'd like that cuppaverse with cream, please." Another piece which I don't remember authoring but which is made out of at least one element from my catchall clip art folder, which is suspicious at best. The 80's were a loooonnngg way back there for me, it seems. I need to do a nice color Photoshop version of this one sometime.

Zap

Another day in the intergalactic void. Recorded by an observer vessel in an unsophisticated part of the galaxy with 9-inch screens and insufficient memory to have full-page displays...