Taral Wayne (1951-2024) was a Canadian artist who resided all his life in Toronto, Ontario. Mainly known for his “fannish” art rather than pro, he was associated with science fiction and fantasy, comics, and furry fandom since 1971. He was nominated eleven times as a fanartist for SF’s highest award, the Hugo. Eleven losses, no wins. In a suprise move though, he was selected to be the Fan Guest of Honour for the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal. He also won the 2008 Rotsler Award, given “for long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community”. Nevertheless, he also worked in book and magazine illustration professionally, and continued to work occasionally in comics. (His own book, Beatrix, ran only for three issues before the black & white comic implosion deflated the field. Later, Taral had a number of short subjects published in other comics.) While he executed what he preferred to call “niche” art (rather than “fetish” art) for quite a long while, it has only appeared in public since the early 2000s. In addition to the WAM art in his Wamserver gallery (Wayback Machine archive), Taral introduced a new “niche” -- this petrifaction or statuephile page. The artist cautioned viewers that the vast majority of the drawings in this gallery are mere sketches or doodles drawn in spare moments for his own amusement, though some were touched up in Photoshop at a later date for uploading. The gallery doesn’t select from anything Taral thought of as his “serious” work. For a glimpse at some of that he suggested viewing his gallery pages on Fur Affinity, and now also on DeviantArt, where a wide assortment of styles and types of art remain archived.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Most of these images were supplied by Taral himself, or posted on his various gallery pages as noted above; the now-defunct Furry Perils Returns Yahoo! Group; or on Fchan; a few others were finds. I’ve arranged them loosely into categories, and added notes on some of them. Except where stated, these notes entirely reflect the opinions of myself (Leem), and not necessarily those of Taral Wayne.
 RECYCLE!
In these environmentally-conscious days we are all encouraged to recycle, and of course artists like Taral are no exception. Several of the poses on these pages were recycled from (or to) other pieces of art, and I’ll point out as many as I can find.
2nd Anniversary additions below are highlighted in purple.
Other recent additions are highlighted in yellow.
STONE
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Taral Wayne
.jpg "Taral Wayne - Basilisk")
-tn.jpg "Taral Wayne - Eheu (text)")
-tn.jpg "Taral Wayne - Cement Block 2")
