Starship Sketches

ca. 1986 This is my first attempt to draw the refitted Enterprise - at least the oldest one that I could find. Since I had only a video of the Star Trek movies, the drawing is accordingly inaccurate.

1991 When I bought the Enterprise model kit, I had the instruction sheet as a much better reference for a drawing - including some of the errors of the AMT model like the too small deflector dome.

1989 This Enterprise-D is the first computer drawing of a starship I ever made. It was done on DOS with Dr. Halo, a crude pixel editor (compared to which even Paintbrush looks professional).

1989 I sketched up this alternative design for the Enterprise-D, as I was not content with its look at first. Today I know this was because the ship was mostly shown from the fore/ventral perspective, which is about the only angle from which it doesn't look excellent. The Galaxy is now my favorite design.

1989 Well, this is embarrassing. Some sort of an über-ship, supposed to be more powerful than the Galaxy. If you look closely, you will see that I modified the neck with correction fluid. Also note the TOS-like nacelles, which I used because I thought of the gleaming Galaxy nacelles as an exception.

ca. 1990 This ship (Bombay class) is clearly better thought out. Without knowing much about 24th century vessels besides the Galaxy (it was only the second season of TNG in Germany), I tried to develop a distinctive look. Much of this design was later incorporated into other ships like the Buenos Aires class.

ca. 1990 This is my first attempt to develop a pre-TOS look. I was quite fond of Matt Jefferies's idea to hide mechanical parts behind hull panels. But it was difficult to come up with a look different from the good old Constitution, as indicated by the many erased shapes that are still faintly visible.

ca. 1991 I always wanted to design more small ships or runabouts, but soon noticed that it would be useful to come up with a plausible internal structure too. Since I never thought I was good with that, I didn't pursue that goal any longer.

ca. 1992 Here is the design of a Starfleet fighter. Like many other fans, I wondered why Starfleet would solely rely on large starships. The design is from a time before I saw the runabout, which established a more "complex" look of small vessels.

1996 This is the first sketch of the Klingon Boreth class. It is one of the few finalized designs that I still conceived on paper. Almost everything else since 1994 was directly drawn in Micrografx Designer.

1999 When I conceived a Renaissance-class design for the ASDB, I mused whether this design couldn't be updated. But this never got beyond the pencil&paper stage.

2000 Whenever I sketch up something today, I always try to match a side view and a top view. Here is something drawn on waste paper. Note the wrinkles in the paper, as they are visible on the left nacelle in the top view.