When I started researching my recent BBC essay, one question in the back of my mind was, how am I going to draw a black hole? There aren't exactly a wealth of images of the real thing - just a handful of blurry telescope images to go by: orange doughnuts floating in darkness. But once I got onto the drawing phase of the project I realised this situation actually gave me a great deal of artistic freedom not available in my last illustrated essay (in which I felt a significant responsibility to historical accuracy). In drawing black holes and the people that have thought about them, I could pull on far wider artistic influences. I knew I wanted to include the kinds of lines and marks and representations I'd found in 17th Century science texts like those of Athanasius Kircher, who wrote about whirlpools and hollow mountains in his 1664 book 'Mundus Subterraneus'.
But my BBC editor, Richard Fisher, had also requested that I lean into a comic book aesthetic on this one - anything I could do to make the images feel like those of a graphic novel was a good thing as far as he was concerned.
One of the things I enjoyed most about drawing from Kirby was the excuse to utilize his famous 'Kirby Krackle'
Casting about the internet, I discovered that Jack Kirby, titan of Marvel's 'Silver Age' and originator of all but a few of the most famous characters in American comics, had published an adaptation of Stanley Kubrick's film '2001: A Space Odyssey' back in 1976. Combined with his more well-known work on the Silver Surfer and Fantastic 4, this comic provided an archive of thrilling space-related artwork, filled with dynamic, eye-popping representations of galaxies, planet systems and intergalactic travel. Kirby's drawings also brilliantly captured the feeling of awe that was central to my telling of the scientific history of black holes. I was writing about the role of emotion, faith and spirituality in early 20th Century theoretical physics - and Kirby's work contained exactly the drama I needed.
I looked at the way Kirby rendered the surfaces of planets like this one...
...the way he used dramatically-lit close-ups on eyes and facial expressions to communicate reactions to what was being seen...
...and how he combined patterns and solid black and white shapes to create movement and heightened perspective. You can see how I combined elements of the above drawings to create the important first image in my essay:
For another key image, of the philosopher Immanuel Kant floating in a 'countless multitude of worlds', I drew from an amazing photo-collage Kirby created for an edition of the Fantastic 4 in 1966:
One of the things I enjoyed most about drawing from Kirby was the excuse to utilize his famous 'Kirby Krackle' - the pattern of black dots he used to create a multitude of effects, from bursts of energy to encroaching galactic darkness. For my drawing of Plato, I adapted a drawing from Kirby's 2001 AD book that had plenty of 'Krackle':
Towards the end of the essay, I had the chance to combine elements of Kirby's aesthetic with the 17th Century etching work from Kircher's book on whirlpools. I worked from an amazing geological cross-section in Kircher's book, showing the role of subterranean caverns on the movement of the oceans:
To this I added some of Kirby's 'Krackle' and lighting effects to create my final drawing. In the spirit of Kirby I also decided to go for broke, adding a solar eclipse to Kircher's volcanoes, whirlpools and stormy skies:
Once I finished the penciling stage of this drawing, I sat back from it and felt a wave of intimidation. It took me a couple of weeks to pluck up the courage to start the inking process: an experience that gave me greater respect for the artists I had drawn inspiration from, both of the 17th Century, and the 20th.
Thanks to Richard Fisher for commissioning and editing this piece, and to Javier Hirschfeld for his care in editing and colour-adjusting my drawings.
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