In my third year in CSM, I wanted to challenge myself to draw landscapes that are non-existent, so I set off to find imaginary worlds from different written materials. I came across these amazing short stories written by Ray Bradbury.

 

The Martian Chronicles were written in the 1940s, when the first image of Mars was not even taken. Bradbury wrote beautiful stories about Mars with his pure imagination. 

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Here are a few quotes from the book which inspired me into drawing this series of illustration: 

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"They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of an empty sea. She watched the blue sky of Mars as if it might at any moment grip in on itself, contract, and expel a shining miracle down upon the sand."

 

"It was a futile spread of pink rocks sleeping on a rise of sand, a few tumbled pillars, and then the sweep of sand again. Nothing else for miles. A white desert around the canal and a blue desert over it. Under the deep ocean sky, straight pecial line of canal going violet through a wide shallow valley penned by low, eroded hills. 

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"This was a crossroads where two dead highways came and went in darkness. The ancient glassy sea floor, where crystals were long buried. The wind hurled and the sand-ship keening over the dead sea-bottom, past up-ended pillars, past deserted docks of marble and brass, past dead white chess cities, past purple foothills, into distance."

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