Regardless of your artistic ability, Space Art will help
develop your ability to illustrate alien worlds.
Watson-Guptill Publications
One of the best ways to hone your skills as an amateur astronomer is to sketch the sky.
Sketching the Moon, planets, and deep-sky targets on paper trains an observer to detect subtle detail in observations, helps keep the initial thrill from a first observing experience, and can bring back wonderful memories of an observing session.
For many of us, the mind imagines far beyond what we see through the scope. Suppose we could jump to another star system and paint our new home star as it rises above a pseudo-exoplanet's rocky horizon. Or what if we could survive Mercury's scorching temperature and tenuous atmosphere to sketch Earth?
For now, these visions are wanderlust, permanently reserved in our imaginations. Sure there are many software packages to produce celestial vistas. But why not tap into your artistic ability and translate your tableau to canvas?
I'm sure your initial reaction is reservation, uncertain of your artistic ability when it comes to worlds you'll never set foot on. If you enlist the assistance of a new book, your inner-Rembrandt will receive a shot in the arm.
Veteran artist and science journalist Michael Carroll has written Space Art: How to Draw and Paint Planets, Moons, and Landscapes of Alien Worlds (Watson-Guptill Publications, 2007). Carroll, whose text and images have appeared numerous times in Astronomy magazine, provides a step-by-step guide to creating semi-authentic vistas through a combination of space-science photographs and your imagination. I'm hard-pressed to name a similar book in which a leading artist reveals the tools of the trade in such a thorough manner.
Carroll begins the book with laying out the essentials: the necessary tools and materials and how to draw objects and features found throughout the universe. Each project and vista Carroll presents builds upon one another. Should you lack the experience to create a liquid ocean's waves crashing on the shore, try the "easier" exercise of subtly highlighting a pockmarked lunar surface.
Carroll helps readers learn the process of mixing colors. This lesson will help train the artist to create realistic atmospheric hues, sunset glows, or icy surfaces.
Space Art also employs interviews with other artists. Presented as profiles, seasoned space artists, such as Dan Durda and Don Davis, provide further hints and tips for readers.
Although your astro-tableaus may never reach Nova or the pages of Astronomy, with the help of Space Art, you will be better prepared to create a partly-real, partly-imaginative celestial vista from your mind's eye.