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I was looking for some inspiration to paint space ships and found a trove of old 70s airbrushed space ship art.

When I was a kid I had a book called Star Quest which basically took a bunch of art from paperbacks and magazines and tried to build a story around them. Even as a kid I could see it was pretty weak, the story usually didn't match the art but it was pretty nice looking.

There were other books in the series called the Terran Trade Authority and other similar books like Tour of the Universe and Space Wars which again, in those pre-internet times were mainly about gawking at cool art without the trade dress hiding half of it.

One of the big things from that time is how all the ships are brightly colored with clashing stripes on them and cool lettering.

Star Wars, Aliens, Outland and other science fiction films would then fuel a more utilitarian color scheme in the 80s but back then every ship was a peacock.

Anyway pictures for your inspiration or enjoyment.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-518-53938_70%20Science%20Fiction%20Art.html

A Chris Foss, Jim Burns, i have a few of those books

There's a Tumblr dedicated to stuff like this: http://70sscifiart.tumblr.com/

May also be a better place to look / host than our own gallery.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
A Chris Foss, Jim Burns, i have a few of those books

Jehan you mentioned someone doing a BFG fleet in 70s livery, do you have a link to that?

Ah Foss, have got several books of his.

Absolutely love some of the imagery, the spacecraft lowering the Easter Island status into place is a great one. And the craft tugging blocks of ice in space.

A really distinctive look to it from the airbrushing, really defined lines and strong contrast think it's great.

Finally, really liked some of the sci-fi books that has these kinds of covers. Remember picking this up as a kid, absolutely nothing to do with the Asimov stories but such evocative artwork and made me pick it up. Of course, once you got into the story it was so good that it didn't matter that you didn't get to read about lots of engineers scavenging a massive fallen robot!

try here :

https://twitter.com/70sscifiart?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Oh man, Terran Trade and Space Wars... I still have a bunch of them. There was also a great History of Science Fiction Art book that described all the trends in sci fi Art, when they started and who were the notable artists. I think John Berkey may have inadvertently ended the peacock phase for American book covers, although IIRC there was a bit of a renaissance in the nineties with Bib Eggleton and Boris Vallejo of all people painting up some gorgeous spaceships. Nowadays, it seems like ships are all CG in the Stephen Martiniere style.

 reds8n wrote:
try here :

https://twitter.com/70sscifiart?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

That's a brilliant link, thanks for posting it!

This might not be exactly what you are looking for but it might be interesting nevertheless:
https://typesetinthefuture.com/2014/12/01/alien/

Also this (from the video game Homeworld, that was inspired by 70s space ships to some degree), on each site the lists at the bottom link to individual pages of all the ships/vehicles with more images:
https://kotaku.com/the-art-of-homeworld-enjoy-5887904
http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Homeworld:_Ships
http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Cataclysm:_Ships
http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Homeworld_2:_Ships
http://homeworld.wikia.com/wiki/Categoryeserts_of_Kharak:_Vehicles (ignore the ork)

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
A Chris Foss, Jim Burns, i have a few of those books

Jehan you mentioned someone doing a BFG fleet in 70s livery, do you have a link to that?

It is not BFG but Dropzone/fleet commander one of the gamers in Nagoya, paints them like that

Ah, these are great! I still have (and read) my copy of Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 AD. Funny story about it, I came across the book when I was in like 1st or 2nd grade in the school library, and I liked it so much that years later I remembered it and bought my own copy off Amazon while I was in university... Good times. Those models really bring me back.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Oh man, Terran Trade and Space Wars... I still have a bunch of them. There was also a great History of Science Fiction Art book that described all the trends in sci fi Art, when they started and who were the notable artists. I think John Berkey may have inadvertently ended the peacock phase for American book covers, although IIRC there was a bit of a renaissance in the nineties with Bib Eggleton and Boris Vallejo of all people painting up some gorgeous spaceships. Nowadays, it seems like ships are all CG in the Stephen Martiniere style.

An acquaintance of mine is married to that Bob Eggleton.

She's an artist, too.

I remember going over those TTA books back when I was in primary school. Late 70s.

I do love this type of artwork.. before everything became star wars or star trek..

Funny thing is the first picture reminded me years ago my cousin saw a picture something like it
with triangle shaped space ships.. immediately he said they were trying to rip off star destroyers from star wars...
Then i looked at the date it was painted... 1963.. Sorry.. I think its the other way around..

Bit of trivia, from the pulp era of the 30s up to at least the 70s editors would commission covers with eye-catching images, then hire a writer to create a story to go with it.

Great thread, love those pictures, and those Dropfleet models too.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
A Chris Foss, Jim Burns, i have a few of those books

Jehan you mentioned someone doing a BFG fleet in 70s livery, do you have a link to that?

It is not BFG but Dropzone/fleet commander one of the gamers in Nagoya, paints them like that

Just .. wow

That's a Chris Foss in miniature form right there!

Great piece of imagination.

Those Foss-inspired Dropfleet Commander ships may have just convinced me to start that game at some point.