Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

There’s a rare chance to buy some official Star Wars, Aliens and HALO art in Central London over the next couple of weeks.

For more than two decades, Reading-based artist John R Mullaney has created highly detailed cutaway artwork featuring locations, architecture, vehicles, spaceships and weapons from major sci-fi cinema properties.

Each piece undergoes a laborious hand drawn process, taking months to complete. The finished art has been approved by some of Hollywood’s biggest studios and printed in a range of officially licensed bestselling books.

This will be John’s first-ever exhibition and sale of collected works of the hugely popular paintings, spanning 25 years of creativity.

Due to the nature of studio-licensed art, John’s paintings cannot be reproduced as prints, meaning the art that’s about to be made available for sale is unique, and no further copies will be available.

“Once these pieces are sold, they are gone,” says John.

He has selected 13 large format original paintings, depicting some of science fiction cinema’s most famous hardware. In addition to Aliens, Star Wars and Halo, there will be art from cult sci-f series Firefly/Serenity. His cutaway artworks show extensive interior architectural detail – his cutaway artwork of Serenity reveals the cockpit, cargo hold and living areas, right down to the carpet and furnishings.

The artworks will be available to view, and buy, from The Troubadour Gallery in Smith’s Court, central London, from April 14 through to May 10. And as there are just a baker’s dozen being exhibited, demand is expected to be high.

John is also an award-winning film-maker and visitors to the exhibition will be able to view John’s short films, including those capturing the creation of several artworks on display presented in dynamic time-lapse sequences.

When creating every piece, John aims to emulate the film-makers he admires who achieve their shots with minimal digital post-production, by similarly accomplishing almost all of the art on paper. He spends hours researching the film’s production design reference, as well as watching and freeze-framing the films to capture every detail and ensure they are screen-accurate. His artworks are initially planned and mapped out in detail on A3 tracing paper, and once approved by the studio and publisher, he scales up the artwork onto A1 300gsm watercolour paper, before beginning the extensive pencil and inking process

Only after this exhaustive series of planning and approval stages is complete does he start applying multiple layers of watercolour and gouache to produce incredibly detailed and complex paintings, rich in depth, colour, texture and detail to convey the usedfuture aesthetic of the universes he’s depicting … including getting any chrome finish spot-on.

Hundreds of hours go into perfecting the paintings.

“This is the first time my work has ever been exhibited, and the first time that fans of these series can savour the scale of the size of these original artworks – I produce my work at a large format scale to achieve as much detail as possible – so these pieces pack a big visual punch.” John says. “In a digital world where we see so much on tiny screens, it’s always refreshing to be able to see big art in the flesh like this.

“I’m super excited to be collaborating with the amazing team at the Troubadour Gallery and for people to see these pieces. I’m a huge sci-fi fan and love these franchises, so I obsess over the details, the colour and the mood of the subjects; I aim to match not just the content but that all-important cinematic feel. If I’m doing a cutaway and showing the interior spaces of a ship, I try and give it the same evocative lighting that you see in the film or the show.”

Speaking exclusively to Sci-Fi Bulletin, John added:

“Doing cutaways illustration and technical art for big franchises is a lot of fun – and a lot of work! Well before pencil is put to paper, a ton of reference-gathering and research has to go into figuring out the content of the art and calculating what goes where. I remember that for my artwork of Mos Eisley, the art editor, writer and myself exchanged endless emails trying to reconcile the relative positions of the buildings seen in A New Hope by using shadow directions. A few years later I was met with a different type of challenge when creating a cutaway artwork of Emperor Palpatine’s private residence and was asked to include his en-suite bathroom, prompting the question: does the single most evil character in cinematic history have a hot tub or a power shower? I went for the latter – he’d want to feel the force.

“Often you find that vehicles from sci-fi shows have a TARDIS-like quality and that the interior set is bigger than the exterior prop. The Aliens APC – which I did a cutaway artwork of – is a case in point. The Marines are visibly taller than the vehicle, but can stand up in it once they’re on the interior set. Happily, working predominantly traditionally means you can cheat these things in a way that isn’t always possible with entirely digital art.

“Scale is often the biggest challenge. The most enjoyable artworks I’ve done are ones where there’s a discernible human scale, and it was a lot of fun working props and costume easter eggs from Firefly episodes into the Serenity cutaway, which is on display at the exhibition. The most challenging cutaways are those where the scale becomes almost abstract; the Halo location of High Charity, also on display, has a width of about 350km! So illustrating that wasn’t straightforward, but we came up with a great solution that conveys its enormity relatively.

“It’s a real buzz to finally exhibit these pieces in such a beautiful Central London location – just a minute or so’s walk from Piccadilly Circus – and I’m thrilled to be collaborating with the Troubadour Gallery and the awesome team at Golden Ticket London. Looking forward, I hope that exhibition sales enable me to put some really exciting projects into gear, including a hugely ambitious cutaway that would make a lot of Aliens fans very very happy indeed.

“If you’re a fan of these franchises or a buyer on the look-out for rare collectibles, then I would love to welcome you to the gallery for a personal tour of these pieces. The artworks were originally commissioned for publication, but seeing them in person like this is the only way to really appreciate their A1 scale, detail and true colour. In a world where so much art is generated entirely digitally, I’m told by collectors that painted artwork like this is becoming increasingly hard to find and view. The paintings can’t be reproduced as prints, so the only way to own these are artworks is to buy these collectible originals.

“If you’re like me and you love the detail in sci-fi, then I guarantee you’re gonna love these artworks.”

John’s art will be on show at The Troubadour Gallery in Smiths’ Court until Saturday, May 10th. Titled ‘Building Bigger Worlds’, the show is a coproduction with the Troubadour Gallery and Hollywood fixers Golden Ticket London.

For more details, or to buy John’s artwork, log on to: https://troubadourgallery.com/

John’s website is: https://www.johnRmullaney.com

To see some of the designs in close-up, check out our gallery here