Artist Christian Waggoner is a relative newcomer to the world of Star Wars illustration, although he's been a fan since first seeing A New Hope as a first-grader back in 1977. Growing up a third-generation portrait artist on his father's side, Waggoner was raised in a household that fostered his artistic skill, having two parents who were accomplished artists themselves and who encouraged their son to develop his own creative skills.
Though trained as a portrait artist growing up, Waggoner found himself gravitating toward still life portraits containing objects with reflective surfaces -- wine bottles, silver vases, brass instruments, and other similar items. Somehow, among these rather traditional and refined objets d'art, an unexpected portrait of Darth Vader emerged.
"I remember right before Episode III came out, the [classic] trilogy DVDs had a preview of the new film that included the making of the new Darth Vader mask," recalls Waggoner. "And I remember seeing just how shiny it was, and thinking, gosh, I would love to do a painting of that. But who would buy it?"
Waggoner got his answer when he chanced upon the ACME Archives booth at the New York Expo in 2007, where representatives from ACME instantly recognized the Star Wars potential in Waggoner's work. "They asked me if I'd be interested in doing a reflections piece of Darth Vader," says Waggoner. "So I sent them a bunch of drawings, many of which initially didn't catch their interest. Finally, I sent them a drawing, and said if this doesn't work, I guess I'm not the artist they're looking for. All my other drawings were really nice pen drawings, and I had done this one in pencil. It was my original thumbnail sketch of a cropped Vader helmet, and they said, 'That's it.'"
In the final illustration, Vader is shown in close-up with A New Hope's dueling Obi-Wan reflected in the eyes of the Dark Lord's mask. For Vader, Waggoner was able to draw from his childhood love of Star Wars for inspiration -- as a kid, he'd seen the first film at least 30 times by fifth grade, had asked for scores of stormtrooper action figures every Christmas, and had the best R2-D2 Halloween costume in town.
"My dad, being a scale model maker, built my Halloween costume, which was R2-D2," says Waggoner. "Basically it rested on my shoulders, the head could turn, and a compartment would open up for people to put the candy in. The following year, he made me a Han Solo gun."
Waggoner's love of both Star Wars and art was also recognized in school, where much of his time was spent drawing Star Wars characters. "All my friends always wanted my folders in school because I would just doodle drawings upon drawings on them," he says. He recently unearthed an early drawing he'd done of R2-D2 when he was six. "I found that in the bottom of one of my grandmother's dressers. She had a lot of my old drawings, and that was the only Star Wars one I had. I like to make a joke -- I only wrote 'little' on the drawing because I was too dumb to spell 'R2-D2'."
Since Vader, Waggoner has done a Boba Fett "reflections" painting, featuring one Han in Carbonite reflected in the bounty hunter's T-shaped visor. A third -- stormtrooper with Rebel soldiers of the Tantive IV reflected in the eyes -- gets its official unveiling today.
"I actually came up with the stormtrooper after Vader," says Waggoner. "I had been working on a different character for like, six months, and I threw in a sketch of this one little stormtrooper, and ACME said they loved it!" Waggoner maintains that he's still not given up on that other character, which should see release at the same time as a yet-to-be-revealed ongoing project between Lucasfilm and ACME. To be sure, though, reflections will play into the composition.
"I love reflections," he says. "I mean, if you crop one of my paintings, it can be abstract, it can be surreal, it's a play of light, a play of values, how things get distorted. You can just play around with so much. I'm now trying to take the art to see more hidden things in the reflections that people will catch."
StarWarsShop has Waggoner's "Stormtrooper" artwork print on paper here and print on canvas here.
