The name of Ralph McQuarrie, a professional illustrator who had
worked for Boeing and for CBS (where he had done animation artwork for network Apollo
space program simulations) was unknown to the general public until the advent of Star
Wars. McQuarrie’s elegant preproduction artwork helped sell the film to 20th
Century Fox and afterwards was widely reproduced, including a handsome portfolio made
available by Ballantine Books. After his work on Star Wars, McQuarrie did some
preproduction artwork for Close Encounters of the Third Kind and even a few
paintings for the proposed new Star Trek TV series that morphed into Star
Trek—The Motion Picture before he became one of the first three people signed by
Glen Larson to work on Battlestar Galactica (the other two were John Dykstra and
Joe Johnston. All three were signed with the understanding that they would be released
immediately if they wanted to work on Star Wars II. McQuarrie and Johnston later
did, but Dykstra’s involvement with BG so poisoned his relationship with
George Lucas that he never worked for Lucas again).
Although McQuarrie’s BG art was widely published in
1978, it has dropped out of sight since. Sources for McQuarrie BG art include Science
Fantasy Film Classics 4, Fantastic Films 5, Starlog 17, the British
edition of the BG novelization, and Mediascene 29, and the Dart
Flipcards BG set, all of which belong in any BG collection anyway.
Anyone familiar with McQuarrie’s SW work will
instantly recognize his BG paintings. McQuarrie has a clean, technical style that
works well for science fiction illustration. While some of his BG paintings have
the kind of finished look about them we expect from his SW work, others were
obviously dashed off rather quickly more as concept drawings than as actual preproduction
art.
The best way to appreciate McQuarrie’s art is to look at it, so
the rest of the article will assume a pictures and text format, with McQuarrie’s art
sorted into categories.
If you’re interesting in seeing McQuarrie’s Star Wars art, check here.