Trek, and Illustration Friday:Wise

I made this for this week's Illustration Friday theme: Wise. It's Athena, goddess of Wisdom.

Here's the line drawing:

and my doodley sketch:

I'm not really that thrilled with the way it came out. I still have a lot of experimenting with the gouache before I feel comfortable with it. But oh well, that's what the illo fridays are for, experimentations.

So Michael and I have been watching Star Trek Original Series episodes in anticipation of the new movie coming out next year, and it's been pretty entertaining so far. TOS had such great colors in the show. I hope that in the 23rd century, we make space travel look as good as they did in the 1960's.

Now, I've never been into the original series, I grew up when Next Generation was showing, and I loved Deep Space Nine and Voyager, and ok, we even watched Enterprise which had its good moments. But the very few episodes of TOS I'd seen were just so hard for me to get into. So what brought on this sudden desire to watch every episode of TOS?

Visiting the STAR TREK EXPERIENCE in Las Vegas. We heard it was closing down in September, and we've always wanted to go, so making the trip was a no-brainer. I really hope it re-opens somewhere sometime in the future, because if you are a Star Trek fan, it was nerd heaven. The first thing we did was eat at Quark's Restaurant. I had the Holy Rings of Betazed, and Michael had the HamBORGer. SO DELICIOUS.

We were greeted by a Klingon and Ferengi before and after our meal. They never broke from their characters, and it was so cool that they allow you to play with them in that way, immersing yourself into their fantasy world. Not that it's that hard for Trekkies and Trekkers, I guess. This kid next to our table was questioing the Ferengi about the ins and outs of their monetary system. Our Klingon warrior asked if we were from San Francisco, specifically, Star Fleet Academy!

Anyway, the experience was great, we did the rides, toured the history of the future, got caricatures made of ourselves as a Cardassian and Bajoran. It's rare to be in a place with lot of other people who love a thing as much as you do, and are sad to see it go. It was mostly wonderful to just feel like I was in this world that I've become so familiar with just through watching the shows all the time, I guess like Disneyland where your wishes come true, except I've never cared that much for Disney and I think Star Trek is way cooler.

Fantasies are very powerful and transformative, I've felt it in the screams of the grown up women at the New Kids on the Block Reunion show and I've felt it in the kindness of the fellow guests and employees at the Star Trek Experience. I hope I get the opportunity to experience something like this again in the future.