SUNDAY DRIVE

Despite the technical merit of this nartarific painting (which was very nearly excluded from my realm of interest) the story it contains more than makes up for the overly proficient execution, and convinces me to display it here as a great example of desktoporama nart.

At first the narrative is confusing and any attempt to interpret the scene raises more questions than answers. Why are these rubber-suit monsters burning the family car? Why are the children standing there watching them instead of running away? Are the monsters their friends? What happened to the driver(s) / parents?

But before we can attempt to address any of these inquiries with confidence, we must ponder the title of the piece, "Sunday Drive".

Ponder with me for a moment...

Have we reached the same conclusion? No doubt. Simple logic leads us to the answer behind this enigmatic scene of despair. What is the most significant element of the deftly chosen title? Would you choose "Sunday" as the dominant principle, or "Drive"? Clearly days of the week are more important than any one vehicle or a ride in a vehicle, so "Sunday" is the dominant theme here.

And what should we do on Sundays? Go for pleasure rides in fancy cars in the middle of the desert? NO! We should be at Church and be spending time at home with our families! Given this tasty treat of lovely logic, the narrative puzzle starts to take form. Obviously these little kids went out on a joy ride when they should be at church, so some fire demons showed up to teach them a lesson, but just as hope might leave us there is one last shimmering possibility in the resigned and mature pose of the children.

"Why aren't you at church demons guys?" they might ask, but the demons have lots of jaw thingies and probably can't talk without blowing stuff up.

So they admit they've been bad, and they accept their loss, and hope for a better day where they can drive freely without fire demons burning their car.

So in my closing conclusion at the end of this review, if I had to summarize the message in fewer words it would be, "That's why you never go for joy rides on Sunday kids, because fire demons will blow up your car".

IN THE FUTURE, WE WILL WEAR METAL UNDERWEAR

This piece exemplifies the quintessential sci-fi nart work. Like so many nasterpieces it is the content more than the quality that earn this baby a place in the nart halls of desktoporama fame.

It also betrays many secrets of our super shiny tech savy future.

In the future we will all wear metal underwear, except for the really unusual aliens which will wear metal shoulder pads with no underwear at all. Because metal underwear is really heavy, metal suspenders will not be uncommon.

Another observation of note is that the metal underwear will often be worn on the outside of our skin tight jumpsuits.

PS all aliens reguardless of their anti-human anatomy will have totally ripped abs and pecs, because all nart-worthy sci-fi characters have pecs and abs.

NOSE LASERS AND BURN VICTIMS

This "nartist" must be a magician. I can here him / her saying in my mind's eye,

"And for my next trick, I will light this candle by shooting a laser beam out of my nose!"

You can tell by the lips, that nose lasers take a lot of concentration and mental focus.

Plus the nartist is apparently also a burn victim, cause I mean hey common, it's tough to learn how to shoot lasers out of your nose. I'm sure they make lots of accidents along the way, but man it is worth it!

DEMON SQUAD

What a demon indeed! with only a few traces of finger smudged / scanned pencil work, this baby puts fear in my eyes, and makes them burn because of the photorealistic fire.

There are three things that make this picture scary.

1. Red eyes

2. Snakes

3. Penguins / penguin esc robot guys

The fortshortening on the snake head is perfect, and symetrical as it should be.

The penguin thing is also missing its red eyes, which makes the fourth scary item in this image

4. Absence of eyes

TICKLE ME TROLL

It's been a while, but I have not given up on my quest to bring you the world's best nart. This particular piece caught my eye on conceptart.org today. The subtle airbrush shadows, the perfectly ambiguous tangencies, and the story, oh the story!

Nothing says nart like airbrushed shadows, especially if the artist manages to maintain hue uniformity through out each element of the image. This one nails it with each figure masterfully possesing their own set of light, shadow and color.

The creative, almost MC Escher esc. alignment of the trolls right leg and how it creates the illusion of being connected to the perfectly placed pile of rocks... Is the little goblin climbing a benign mountain of curiously uniform debri, or is he unknowingly scaling the giant trolls igneous calf? Not even the brittle tree can help us be sure of the truth. Is it growing from the ground level behind the stones, or is it merely a clever disguise to lure hapless goblings onto his merciless toe.

The story, the moment of ultimate anticipation frozen in time, even more so because of the snow in this wintery scene of death and despair. Our hearts are instantly drawn to the terrible fate of the unlucky stage front goblin. Heart strings are plucked to sing the melancholy tune of forboding as his splattered brains splish splash across our mind's eye.

But wait... What is this, the sole example of saturation here to shed light on the doomed, to give color to this otherwise dreary image. The lone leaf of luckiness clasped in the hands of a fellow goblinger is perched atop the mysterious masonry, and in his tiny hand is held the undoing of the magnificent foe. What will happen when the feathery weapon frolicks across the giant hairless armpit of the antagonist? The ultimate outcome is only to played out in the viewer's emotionally torn mind.

Does the boulder slip from the terribly tickled troll's clumsy hands before it is too late for our little gobblets? Will it be soon enough to fall upon his own gigantic cranium, or will it simply fall into the snow and not fall an anything but snow and airbrushed shadows.

Will they all be friends after that? Will the troll let everyone climb on his tricky trap toe?

Only a nasterpiece (nart masterpeice) could pull off such a wonderous struggle between a giant troll and two tiny gobulerians in the snow. Plus it has a pile of rocks...