David Barr Kirtley

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Family Tree Short Story Art Illustration Michael J. DiMotta

January 29, 2010 by David Barr Kirtley 4 Comments

Here’s an illustration for my short story “Family Tree” (which will be appearing later this year in the John Joseph Adams anthology The Way of the Wizard):

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta

This was a birthday/Christmas present from my parents. It was done by a staggeringly talented young artist named Michael J. DiMotta, who I picked out after randomly coming across his website. I came up with the basic (triptych) layout, but most of this was all him — the mammoth, baroque design of the tree, the sunset sky, the pyrotechnic magic. Obviously he put an insane amount of work into this thing, but I guess he’s not sick of it yet, because now he’s interested in adapting the story into a graphic novel, which we’re currently pitching to editors.

Here are some details:

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
Garrett, Elizabeth, Sebastian (baby), Bernard, Simon

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
Malcolm, Meredith, Meredith’s mother, Nathan

David Barr Kirtley Family Tree Art Illustration Michael J DiMotta
The Tree of Victor Archimagus

From “Family Tree”:

    A month later Simon stood and regarded the tree of Victor Archimagus.
    It was gigantic, its trunk as wide around as a castle wall. A good way up, the trunk split into a great V — the two branches that had grown upon the births of Victor’s sons, Franklin and Atherton. From there the branches continued to climb and divide — one for each legitimate male heir — and now over a hundred descendants of the late wizard resided within the tree’s luxurious chambers. (Female children were married off and sent away — Victor had never been a terribly enlightened sort.) The tree was a virtuoso feat of spellcraft, the first of its kind, and upon its creation Victor had been so impressed with himself that he’d taken the surname Archimagus — master wizard. Simon was the only one to have successfully replicated the spell. Families that possessed the rare gift of magic seemed always to be afflicted with low fertility, but the fact that Victor’s tree grew larger and grander depending upon the number of offspring had ensured a frenetic effort to proliferate his adopted surname, and had also — perhaps inevitably — led to a rivalry between the descendants of Franklin and the descendants of Atherton over who could produce the greatest number of male heirs. At the moment it happened that the two halves of the tree were in perfect balance. Today’s presentation ceremony for Bernard’s infant son would change that.

Note: Firefox has a bug which causes it to display colors wrong, so for the full effect use other software to view these images.

Filed Under: art & animation

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Comments

  1. Mary Kay says

    January 29, 2010 at 11:27 pm

    Just FYI, I viewed thes pics side by side in Safari and Firefox and the colors were very nearly identical. The oranges *might* have been a wee bit less vibrant in FF. Might.

    MKK

    Reply
  2. David Barr Kirtley says

    January 30, 2010 at 2:52 am

    Hi Mary. Hmm, I dunno. On my MacBook Pro the images look completely different in Firefox than in Safari or Preview, and my online research suggested that this was a problem with Firefox.

    Reply
  3. Mary Kay says

    January 31, 2010 at 3:23 pm

    How really weird. I’m on a MacBook Air and they look pretty much identical to me. Computers is weird. So are the Intertubes.

    MKK

    Reply
  4. Pipedreamergrey says

    October 12, 2010 at 5:05 pm

    Fantastic artwork! That illustration would make an awesome dust jacket.

    Reply

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Geek's Guide to the Galaxy is a podcast hosted by author David Barr Kirtley and produced by Lightspeed Magazine editor John Joseph Adams. The show features conversations about fantasy & science … Read more

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David Barr Kirtley

David Barr Kirtley is an author and the host of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast on Wired.com, for which he’s interviewed well over a hundred guests, including George R. R. Martin, Richard Dawkins, Paul Krugman, Simon Pegg, Margaret Atwood, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Ursula K. Le Guin.
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