Friday, May 27, 2011

2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY Art by Bob McCall

Here are just a few of the marvelous promotional and concept paintings from renowned space artist Robert McCall done for Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey.

McCall also did design and conceptual illustrations for Star Trek - The Motion Picture, The Black Hole, and the aborted, pre-Glen Larson version of Universal's 70s Buck Rogers television series. McCall's work was not only dynamic and dramatic, but rooted in genuine space science and technology. His illustrations can be found on U.S. postage stamps, NASA mission patches, and his murals grace the walls of the National Air and Space Museum, the National Gallery of Art, The Pentagon, EPCOT Center, and Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.

5 comments:

  1. Beautiful! I remember the jogging scene from the third painting blowing my mind when I was a kid. :)

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  2. outstanding!

    got any of that 70's Buck Rogers artwork?

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  3. Yes, but I need a scanner. I'm planning a whole post on that version of the show one of these days....

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  4. I've always loved that one of the astronauts conferring with the moonbase behind them. That one of the Discovery's centrifuge, though, has become a favorite, too!

    One of the recent Space Shuttle mission patches was based directly upon a McCall design he was working on just before his passing.

    His artwork was technically brilliant, but also captured a certain majesty that inspired awe. I have an old book, Our World in Space, that features tons of his paintings & drawings, as well as a school folder by Mead that had artwork based upon stuff from that book. Most kids my age had superhero or sports team folders, I had plain folders except for that space one, and I kept it all these years. I got the book almost two decades after I got the folder, and was surprised to recognize some of the artwork! (I may have already mentiond this in an earlier comment to a different entry, so apologies if I've been redundant!)

    McCall also did some World War II paintings & drawings which showed an epic quality to the battlegrounds depicted... I specifically remember some work he did relating to the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack.)
    CR

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  5. The moonbase one fascinates me, too. It seems to be the first artist's conception (that I can recall) of the device that we now recognize as the tablet computer.

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