MOBY-DICK, Page 549 (second, final version)

Title: Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse! - the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!"

15.5 inches by 10.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
January 23, 2011

MOBY-DICK, Page 549 (first, unused version)

(Simply put, I had two ideas for this piece and I just couldn't decide. So I made both of them on the same afternoon thinking it would be easier to choose which one to use once they were both complete. I ended up liking them both quite a bit, but the second one in the post above seemed just a bit more cinematic, violent, and terrifying so I went with that. Still, I like each of these quite a bit.)

Title: Retribution, swift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of all that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead smote the ship's starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell flat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the harpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.

"The ship! The hearse! - the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!"

10.5 inches by 7.5 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
January 23, 2011

MOBY-DICK, Page 548

Title: Hearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled round to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution, catching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing in it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it - it may be - a larger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing prow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.

12 inches by 8.25 inches
ink on watercolor paper
January 22, 2011

MOBY-DICK, Page 544

Title: "For when three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be sure the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the evening and the end of that thing - be that end what it may."

14.5 inches by 10.75 inches
acrylic paint on found paper
January 18, 2011

MOBY-DICK, Page 542

Title: "What's this? - green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks. No such green weather stains on Ahab's head! There's the difference now between man's old age and matter's. But aye, old mast, we both grow old together; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship?"

8.25 inches by 12 inches
ink, marker and watercolor on watercolor paper
January 17, 2011

MOBY-DICK, Page 513

Title: As the unsetting polar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months' night sustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Ahab's purpose now fixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew.

8 inches by 11.5 inches
ink on found paper
December 28, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 512

Title: Ahab, - all other whaling waters swept - seemed to have chased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there...

6.75 inches by 10 inches
ink on watercolor paper
December 27, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 484

Title: "Look aloft!" cried Starbuck. "The St. Elmo's Lights (corpus sancti) corpusants! the corpusants!"

All the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each tri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of the three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like three gigantic wax tapers before an altar.

7.5 inches by 11 inches
acrylic paint and ballpoint pen on found paper
December 8, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 158 (re-drawn)

(For various reasons, a handful of these illustrations needed to be redrawn. These are the new versions.)

Title: "God keep me! — keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

9.5 inches by 7.75 inches
acrylic paint, ink and marker on found paper
October 31, 2010


(original version below)

MOBY-DICK, Page 409

Title: ...as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the ship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further and further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully champed the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on all sides; then the rushing Pequod, freighted with savages, and laden with fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of darkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander's soul.

9 inches by 7.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
October 17, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 115 (re-drawn)

(For various reasons, a handful of these illustrations needed to be redrawn. These are the new versions.)

Title: For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab.

ink on found paper
5.25 inches by 6 inches
October 3, 2010


(original version below)

MOBY-DICK, Page 369

Title: Hence it is, that, while other ships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at a score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have sighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating seamen like themselves. So that did you carry them the news that another flood had come; they would only answer—"Well, boys, here's the ark!"

15.5 inches by 10.75 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
September 6, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 314

Title: So close did the monster come to the hull, that at first it seemed as if he meant it malice...

10.75 inches by 7.75 inches
ink and marker on found paper
July 18, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 295

Title: Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, so is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes stripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the windlass continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the water, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the line called the "scarf," simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck and Stubb, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and indeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher and higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top...

7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
acrylic paint, ballpoint pen and ink on found paper
July 1, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 226

Title: These temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a wondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in which, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a devilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so wearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful errand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.

7.5 inches by 10.5 inches
acrylic paint, colored pencil, ink and marker on found paper
April 15, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 158

Title: "God keep me! — keep us all!" murmured Starbuck, lowly.

9.5 inches by 7.5 inches
acrylic paint and ink on found paper
February 10, 2010

MOBY-DICK, Page 115

Title: For several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was seen of Captain Ahab.

7 inches by 7.75 inches
ink on found paper
December 27, 2009

MOBY-DICK, Page 101

Title: Ship and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a screaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave three heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone Atlantic.

8.5 inches by 11 inches
ink on found paper
December 11, 2009

MOBY-DICK, Page 067

Title: She was a thing of trophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased bones of her enemies.

7.75 inches by 11 inches
marker on found paper
November 7, 2009

MOBY-DICK, Page 066

Title: ...take my word for it, you never saw such a rare old craft as this same rare old Pequod. She was a ship of the old school, rather small if anything; with an old fashioned claw-footed look about her.

11 inches by 7.75 inches
ballpoint pen on found paper
November 5, 2009