KAOR, fellow Barsoomians, and to the rest of you, too.  A few years ago, in a rare mood of elevated clarity, I became aware that the main body of my art works were sculptural, and a days-long dredge through trunks, old sketchbooks, boxes of old stuff, and an inventory of things hanging on the walls revealed not much that impressed me in the way of my drawings and paintings.  I found this a bit surprising, but reminded myself that knowing that you can do something doesn't mean that you've done it;  I've always known I could draw and paint, but obviously I hadn't done much to prove it to anyone outside my own imagination   A sculpture is a real thing, and a drawing or painting is an illusion.  A sculpture is an infinite set of drawings of the same subject, and a  drawing or painting is hopefully the most satisfying view of said subject, or one of them  It is an impossible challenge to say which is the higher craft, so I leave that debate for those who have nothing better to do, and simply point out that, while a sculpture can show all of one thing, 2-D can show the best of one thing, and a lot besides, such as environment, background, atmosphere, lighting, mood, off-the-ground motion and distance.

   So I purchased a truckfull of canvas, stretcher-bars, gesso, good oils and brushes and fixed them all up ready for masterpieces;  they make great movable partitions, and most of them remain, uh, white.  Well, then I got some sketchbooks, in five sizes--huge, large, medium, small and ditzy--and a heap of drawing and inking stuff, and after some experimenting, I found that Meester Sculptor's eye liked the hard outlines of a razorpoint felttip in jet black, and the five by eight, 220-page hardbound archival sketchbooks. Okay, so I don't really LIKE to draw.

   I filled up a few of the fivebyeights, with single drawings, mostly, some little 2- and 4-page vignettes, short stories, and by book five had begun to like some of my characters well enough to dedicate entire books to graphic novels all about them, gradually learning tricks such as scene transitions, full turnarounds on characters, pivotal moment selection, and starting to love the freedom of the pen.  I was almost prepared to try to illustrate the entirety of one of my favorite stories of all, A PRINCESS of MARS.  Knowing that art is more pleasant and fruitful if permitted to happen, rather than by being made to happen, I drew a deep breath and committed myself to the pages, anxious and excited to see what this magical story would reveal.

 Since I was drawing initially for my own amusement, with no thought of publishing, I pulled all the normal stops and drew the way I imagined the classic story to be written.  The characters are highly underclad, yet oblivious to it; it's their normal way, and they don't see much naughty or titillating about it.  The men are men and the women are women and blood is red and scary.  I set out to be honest with the nudity and violence, and the devil take Pollyanna, she needs to grow up anyway.   A lifetime would be required, in full-sized oils of five thousand panels to truly do justice to the story.  I can't spare that, but I hope you will find the little scenes that I have captured to be at least somewhat rewarding and enjoyable.  You may notice that the captions are paraphrased in places for the sake of brevity, clarity and fluidity, and hope no one minds me taking this small additional liberty.  I hope you enjoy it, and thank you. 

~ James Killian Spratt, m.sc.