Jeremiah Humphries’ art includes a few steam- and dieselpunk pieces, including a drawing of Nemo’s Nautilus and a railway gun that seems inspired by Nazi Germany’s Landkreuzer.
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The Art of Egle Zioma
Egle “Cathy” Zioma is a Lithuanian artist who has done a few steampunk works, including the cover illustration for the first steampunk novel published in the Baltic state: Andrius Tapinas’ Hour of the Wolf.
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The Art of Myke Amend
Myke Amend has been on the steampunk scene from early on. He even illustrated a couple of covers of the old Gatehouse Gazette. His work features airships, mad science and surreal portraits.
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The Art of Donaguirre
“Donaguirre” is a German artist whose lovely Art Deco-inspired posters typically implore citizens of the fictional Eldorado to buy war bonds to fund a three-way Cold War with Teutonian Empire in Europe and the Empire of Nikko across the Pacific.
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The Art of Min Nguen
Min Nguen is a diverse artist whose work spans the clock-, steam- and dieselpunk spectrum. I selected all of his airships for you, but if you’re fond of science-fiction artwork as well, you should definitively check out his DeviantArt profile.
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The Art of Vadim Voitekhovitch
Vadim Voitekhovitch’s art is proof that everything looks better with airships. It’s hard to pick just a few examples from his DeviantArt profile; all his paintings are gorgeous. Check it out!
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The Art of Stefan Prohaczka
No artist has done more to define the dieselpunk aesthetic than Stefan Prohaczka. All the genre’s influences come together in his work: deco, film noir, midcentury pulp, retro-futurism, totalitarian propaganda. Nobody combines it like Stefan and still make it feel coherent and natural.
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Norman Bel Geddes’ Fantastical Airliner
Norman Bel Geddes was an American industrial designer and futurist who had a major influence on the streamlined Art Deco design of the 1930s and 40s.
Few of Geddes’ designs came to fruition. A notable exception was the General Motors Pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, called Futurama.
One of his unrealized designs was “Airliner Number 4,” a nine-deck amphibian airliner that he sketched in 1929.
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Airships in War: Not So Successful in the Real World
The golden age of the airship began around the turn of the last century, when the first Luftschiff Zeppelin — named after the German Count von Zeppelin who pioneered the construction of rigid airships — was launched.
The possibility that airships might be used in war was quickly recognized. George Griffith’s The Angel of the Revolution (1893, our review here) has airship bombing Russia’s major cities. H.G. Wells’ The War in the Air (1908) describes the obliteration of entire fleets by aerial attack.
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Airships: True Liners of the Skies
Although airships are popular in steampunk, their heydays came during the era that is more typically associated with dieselpunk. They shared the skies with that other novelty, the aeroplane. The two coexist elegantly in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004).
Planes represent adventure and perhaps a tad of recklessness. Airships exhale confidence and grandeur. They represent an era that was characterized by progress and great confidence in it.
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