painting in progress

January 2,2007. This is the new painting I will be painting. The canvas measures 20”x 16”. It will be a scene of the Moon in the foreground, the Earth in the background and the stars of the Milky Way in the far background. I will be taking pictures and uploading them to this page at every step so you can watch how I paint it and watch the progress of the painting. Thanks for checking my site out and I hope you enjoy my work. Look up, Rick Costello

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 9,2008, 4:39pm- Starting the Earth, probably finishing the No. and So. America’s and starting the clouds.

January 11,2008 -I am going to start putting the stars on using a star chart and then go back and touch up the Earth and Moon.

January 9,2008- 7:51 pm

January 11, 2008

January 12,2008 beginning stars

January 12, 2008 Earth and stars

January 12, 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.


	It’s 12:00 thursday (1/22/08) morning. Tomorrow, I will go back to the star chart and put some more stars in. This painting is now taking shape of how I originally saw it before I started. The Earth still needs more work but I will work on the stars before I go back to finish it




	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 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.




	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.


	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.




				January 27, 2008



			Febuary 20, 2008


		January 31,2008



	Febuary 25, 2008



March 15, 2008 Reworking the moon

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



	Febuary 26, 2008 Working on the Earth



		March 28, 2007


	Febuary 24,2008

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

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

Putting the stars back in. This time, I’m making the constellations bigger than I originally did. The constellations were too small before and too close together. This will look more like it should and be more realistic. Look up.

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.

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