Somewhere in the base of my brain lives the 12-year-old me, still a sucker for classic pin-up art, lurid pulp and detective story covers and clichéd 50’s sci-fi ray gun and spaceship illustrations, particularly involving beautiful women. So I can’t help but love images like this mock comic cover, in all its misty-planet, skin-tight spacesuit and ring-barreled raygun glory. Space Slaves of Venus, indeed.

I suspect that digital painter Aly Fell is in pretty direct contact with the 12-year old kid in the base of his brain as well, since he apparently turns out images like this mostly for fun (and, I presume, to keep his digital painting chops up) when not doing character design and animation for gaming companies like Eurocom Entertainment, Core Design, Nu-GenerationGames and Cosgrove Hall.

Fell has little of his professional work on his site for contractual reasons, instead populating it with his digital paintings, largely of women, often with themes of horror, sci-fi or a particular fascination with “angels” and “devils”, appealing on another level to adolescent boys’ fascination with the idea of “good girls” and “bad girls”.

Fell is fond of classic pin-up artists like Gil Elvgren and illustrators like Norman Rockwell as well as the more obvious influences from sci-fi and fantasy art. He does his digital painting in Painter, Photoshop and Alias Sketchbook.

His space on CGSociety includes brief discussions of the images, his influences and working process and his regular site occasionally includes tutorials, including a brief animated step by step of the image shown here.

Staying in touch with the adolescent inside us as we grow older (as long it we don’t let him be in charge too much) is a Good Thing. It’s all too easy to let that sense of adventure, optimism and wide-eyed fascination slip away.

Note: Site contains some mildly NSFW material.