"Ghost Boat"

Ghost Boat Apparition in the Bermuda Triangle as inspired by a 1973 drugstore trade paperback I read when I was eleven. The author was actually two co-authors: George Simpson (Author) and Neal Burger (Author).

The premise was simple: A World War II submarine, lost 30 years, returns on a deadly mission. A spellbinding novel that voyages into the very heart of the Devil's Triangle mystery.

I drew this at age eleven in 1973, but my maternal grandmother--my "Other Mother"--known to the rest of the world as "Grandma Snow White"--Esther Frances Melloy-Coutu, insisted that I apply watercolors over my pencils and learn to paint. I HATE painting! I did then and I do now. She coached me as I used saliva to twist each brush's sable hairs to a point, and while I struggled to keep the paint's consistency not-too-watery, and applied the sea water colors I wanted.

Only after I painted the fog, the tornadic clouds inside the storm clouds through the vortex behind the clouds, and the sea swells, did she let me utilize my ink markers, India ink quill points, and some rust colored paint to dry-brush onto the wrecked sub.

From this experience, I learned to occasionally utilize watercolors and acrylic paints pulled from my "Felix the Cat's Bag of Tricks" in order to complete an effect that air brush artists had begun using throughout the late 1970s until the age of computer-generated-effects that came whole decades later.