Larry Mac Dougall's Tales from the Snail Cover

Here it is, the third Tales from the Snail and probably, the first cover illustration by the young Larry Mac Dougall.

Larry was working for the burgeoning Silver Snail/Andromeda Distributions at the time and sharing an apartment with 

Tom Stormonth, in a building on the south side of Bloor Street, between Spadina Avenue and Bathurst Street.

Interestingly but of no real historic value, they shared an outdoor landing and a interior wall with the young Bill Marks, who lived next door with his girlfriend, the young and lovely, Tanya Huff.

The ways of the world are truly strange.

Bill Marks was just getting Vortex Magazine off the ground and dreaming about Mr. X.

Larry was an amateur sketcher with dreams of doing some comic book strips.

Tanya had written the dialogue for the 

Peter Hsu story in Vortex #1 but I'm not sure how high her ambitions were at the time.

Only Tom didn't really have an axe to grind in the artistic field.

Thirty years on,

Bill Marks is a minor movie producer.

Larry is a well respected fantasy illustrator.

Tanya is a well known writer of fantasy and science fiction.

Tom Stormonth works for a living and lives outside of Kingston, Ontario.

But I digress.

Larry had shown me some cute cartoons of a diminutive guitar player wearing a black top hat and I was impressed.

Then he did the art for the cover above and I knew that he was the real deal.  It just took a few more years for his abilities with a pencil to be recognized by other folk.

The thrill of discovering this in the Previews Catalogue...

I was so happy that Larry had made it to a point where he had his own Art book!

 

Here is a "borrowed" photograph of Peter Meseldzija, 

(of The Legend of Steel Bashaw) who is no mean artist himself, 

buying one of Larry's watercolour paintings from him at an IlluXCon in 2010.  What better recommendation is there?

Finally, here is the handsome artist himself, Larry Mac Dougall.

Congratulations Larry, I am proud to say that I knew you when...