Star Wars meets Star Trek - Kirk and Leia

We found out this week that J.J. Abrams will direct Star Wars Episode 7. And I’m sure you also know he’s also currently at the helm of the Star Trek movies. A lot has been written about how this marks a kind of coming together for the two legendary ‘Star’ franchises – so I thought I’d illustrate that with a couple of symbolic meetings of iconic characters from the two universes.

I’ve never had any desire to draw Star Trek characters. That’s not to say that I don’t like Trek – in fact I’ve been a huge fan for years and think William Shatner is a total legend. But for me the aesthetic of the Star Wars films in much more rich and interesting.

This piece shows a young Captain Kirk sweeping up Princess Leia after gunning down a Stormtrooper. I found it extremely challenging to draw Kirk. Although his face is very familiar – he doesn’t have any especially distinguishing features – so I spent more time trying to get his face right than I did drawing everything else in this picture.

I didn’t want to give any appearance of favoring Trek over Wars (or vice versa) – so I’ve also drawn a companion piece featuring Han Solo and Uhura re-using elements of this image to give a kind of ‘alternate universe’ feel to the two pictures.



And I've added a third and final Star Wars / Star Trek piece to finish off this trilogy:



This is an original depiction of copyright characters I didn’t create and don’t own. This is fan art – created solely to show my artistic ability – it isn’t for sale and isn’t available for reproduction. I drew this in Photoshop using a Wacom pad – this is a low-res version of the original.