A couple months ago now, I picked up this book at a local Half-Price Books. As you can of course see, it’s the Star Wars art portfolio of Dave Dorman. As I (then, erroneously) made reference to in a recent post, Dorman was a prolific watercolor artist for Star Wars media back in the 1990′s.
This book, published in 1996, showcases his art up to that point in his career. Some of his most well-known art can be found in the Dark Empire comic:
This book is really interesting, not least because it shows some of Dorman’s rough sketches & layouts, but also a few of the body models that he employed.
Dorman also did a number of the single-issue covers for the Tales of the Jedi comic series by Tom Veitch & Kevin J. Anderson. Though unfortunately, if you happen to own the trade paperbacks of Tales, you really don’t see very much of it, save for a brief cover gallery at the end. However, the most easily recognizable piece of art from this series is undoubtedly this painting of Ulic Qel-Droma:
And just a side note here; this art also went on to be featured as the cover of the Tales of the Jedi Companion in the old Star Wars RPG from West End Games:
Weirdly, the same day that I found this book showcasing Dorman’s art, I found these at another HPB: full cast audio dramas of both Dark Empire & Tales of the Jedi on cassette tapes, all of them featuring this exact cover art. 😵
Now, the more eagle-eyed among you have probably picked up on the fact that there are several things missing here. For one, there’s no Empire’s End. That’s not due to HPB not having that one on the shelf or me not being able to find it, that’s just because it doesn’t exist*. 😐 The same goes for the rest of Tales of the Jedi, though it’s a bit more forgivable there, since these were released back in 1995 and the story didn’t, for reals, conclude until 1999.
*Okay, technically the audio drama of Empire’s End does exist, but it’s only available in the CD special edition re-release of the audio drama - are you kidding me? 😑
And to boot, in classic Star Wars in the 90′s fashion, both of these stories have been abridged to absolute shit. 😩 But I digress….
When I found these, they were all still factory sealed, so I had the distinct pleasure of popping them open for the first time in 26 years. That was really wonderful. 🙂 Look, I’ll probably never listen to these, and probably not for the reason you think. Believe it or not, I do have a working cassette player, but I just can’t say that I care all that much. They’re an oddity, and a really neat piece of Star Wars history, but for now, I think they’ll just live on my bookshelf.
Since finding this artbook, I’ve really gained a ton of respect and admiration for Dave Dorman as an artist, and as a Star Wars fan. And this is just scratching the surface; he did the covers for the Rogue Squadron comic series by Michael A. Stackpole, as well as the Dark Forces: Jedi Knight game tie-in (which isn’t mentioned in this book, since it only came out 1998!) and the covers for all of the Young Jedi Knights books.
The man is a true legend, and his art has served to take readers to that galaxy far, far away for decades now. ❤
Next up in the art-appreciation posts: Drew Struzan 😉
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