January 2, 2008

For  the next few of days I’ll be putting the craters on the Moon. This is the opposite side of the Moon, the side we never see.  

January 3, 2008- 1:58 pm

January 4, 2008

January 7, 2008

   January 8,2008       Still working the Moon

January 2, 2008

I’ve finished putting the highlights on the craters in their correct location using a map of the Moon.  Next is the shadows.

January 3, 2008- 4:38 pm

January 7, 2008

January 8, 2008

January 14,2008

January 17,2008- I ended up the last couple days blackening out the stars from the left of the Moon up to the left top corner. I started using a light blue for the stars there but made them a darker blue around the rest of the painting.  You can slightly see the difference in the Jan. 14 scene on the left. I had to fix this difference so I  wiped out about 9,000 stars and then redo them in darker blue. The far background stars are now done and I can now work on the closer stars and the constellation stars.  There will be a lot of stars when I finish this.

January 17, 2008- Showing mass of  background stars

January 20, 2008                 The stars below Earth are in the constellation Orion.

         ^        ^ ^ =Gases from the    The Star       / Horsehead Nebula Betelguese / on left, Orion Nebula                   / to the right, just right                    / of Orions Belt.                        

January 22, 2008-- I’ve been re-working the moon, giving it more of a blast of light that is striking it from the Sun.  You can see it clearer in the picture on the left.  In that pic just below the center of the paint- you can see the reddish glow of nebulae near the 3 stars of Orions belt.  The smaller nebula on the left side under the 3rd star of the belt, is the gas and dusts from the Horsehead Nebula.  Just to the right is the gases and dusts of the Orion Nebula. These dusts and gases are the remnents of stars that ended their lives in supernova distruction of a star, sending its elements into space to combine with stellar atoms and reform  into new stars, stars with planets, planets with liquid water and planets with life.  The gases of the Horsehead and Orion Nebulae are stellar nurseries, forming new stars from the gas and dusts of prior giant stars.

January 23, 2008-working stars

       January 23, 2008

Unlit gases and dusts around the Orion Nebula

Today I worked on the Orion Nebula and the clouds of gases that surround it.  The nebula is the bright yellowish area in the center of the darker clouds  I then put in more of the constellation stars before I put on a lot of further away stars.  I ‘d like to know the exact number of stars in this scene when it’s finished.  There should be a lot of depth with that 3-D effect in the end. 

January 24, 2008- Painting the constellation stars in one at a time and the same with the background stars. Now, this part of the night sky is high in the south when the Sun sets.  Now that I think about it, this is our night sky right now, look up.

January 25, 2008-- The depth of stars in this scene is hard to see on a computer but it’s amazing.  As you can see, the Earth is being drown out by the light of the stars. I can never tell how much life to bring to the earth until I paint  the stars in first.  This is my “stand in” Earth until I see what I need in the final Earth. It took an hour to paint and I use it to visualize the final scene.

January 26, 2008-- Now I’m going to put more costellation stars on south of Orion.  When I’ve finished the stars, I’ll go back and bring out more of the highlights on the moon and then bring the Earth to life.

Close up showing the Orion nebula area.  I still have to paint in more stars at different depths between the bright stars and the tiny far away backgroung stars which will bring an amazing sense of depth into space and through the depth of our Milky Way Galaxy.

The constellation stars are now in and I will finish the background stars

March 28, 2007- The stars are gone!    I’m not happy about it but every time I looked at the painting, the amount of stars which must amount to 80-100,000 individuals always bothered me.  It’s an artist thing I guess but there were too many stars in this scene to me and it lost its realistic feel of being in space.  The last month I’ve been debating if I should throw all that work behind.  Good bye. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh                                                                           

March 28, 2007

The reason I originally put all these stars on is that there really are this many stars in this scene. If you could focus on the most distant stars around the Orion Nebula, you would see that view absolutely packed with stars, all at varying distances but in the same line of sight. There are a lot of stars in the galaxy.  So let me now finish this . Thanks again for looking.    Rick                      

April 2, 2008

Starting the stars from scratch,,,, again.I had to do it

   April 4, 2008 - All the constellation stars are in but I still have to put in the Orion Nebula. You can see the 3 stars of the belt below the Earth.   Now to put the far background stars in.

April 11, 2008 - I’ll put another picture in next to this to show the background stars that you can’t see in this picture. The background stars are very small and far away

April 13, 2008 -Next, I’ll put in the stars between the constellation stars and the far away background stars which should increase the visualization of depth in space. I would estimate the background stars I just put in to number around 12,000 individuals.

Finished

August 4, 2008 - Ok I’m not finished.  As you can see on the left, the Earth is too bright in contrast with the moon and I don’t see it as being behind, in the distant from the moon.  This picture is slightly false color but I added more of a black/blue to the Earth’s oceans which moved the Earth back into the distance.  Tomorrow, I’ll paint the clouds in and this painting will be finished