r/TerranTradeAuthority

Greetings from Husum, Germany!

I wanted to share one of my first sci-fi oil paintings.

From the beginning I've been fascinated by the visual worlds created by artists like Chris Foss, John Berkey and John Harris. Especially the artwork I discovered on old book covers and in the Terran Trade Authority books has stayed with me for years.

I'm trying to capture a little of that spirit again, using traditional media such as oil paint and pastels.

This painting is from 2025 and depicts an orbital station above a distant planet. Large ships dock here to transfer cargo and passengers, while smaller craft handle transportation between the station and the surface. It makes more sense than sending kilometer-long freighters down into a gravity well every time.

No battle.

No catastrophe. No great dramatic event.

Just everyday activity somewhere very far from home. A small safe harbour for ships after a long journey.

I also included a few pictures showing how I plan these paintings with sketches, as well as the DIY sci-fi frame I built for it.

Collected in Dream Makers (1988) as "Leviathon." Whether that's a typo is a mystery known only to Chris Moore and his editors.