New paintings and regular art updates.
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt was one I chose, equator. Why? I don’t know. Digital drawing of an Earth like planet with a red equatorial line drawn on it. In my imagination this is a planet encircling city. The only place warm enough for the alien life is the hottest part of the planet on its equator. Used Artrage app to draw this.
I was trying to draw the planet Saturn, which is at opposition at the moment (on the far side of the sun so fully illuminated). But I couldn’t get the right shape or colour so I went a bit abstract. Using Artrage and photodirector I put the initial sketch through lots of filters and ended up with this colourful picture.
Tuesdays #bandofsketchers prompt was World. A world.. Jupiter. From micro molecules last time to a macro planet x another felt pen drawing. It’s hard to get subtlety with felts, I tried dampening them with a little bit of water.
Lapis lazuli
I love you
Blue rock heated
Sulphur in it
See the world
As a blue marble
A small blue dot
In infinite space.
Now we know
Other blue planets
But is there water
On those orbs?
If you could have something named after you, what would it be?
I love astronomy, I don’t know enough about it, but I learn what I can. Red dwarfs, white dwarfs, even brown dwarfs? Supernovae, Nova, planetary nebula. Planets. I probably learnt most of it from a TV programme called the Sky at Night, that used to be presented by Sir Patrick Moore. Since he passed away its been presented by Maggie Aderin-Pocock and Chris Lintott. But it seems to have disappeared off the TV recently with no plans to broadcast it at the moment! What? I’ve been watching it for decades.
You can also do citizen science like things on Zooniverse looking at Mars, or planets round other starts, or even looking for radio signals. I do find the whole thing fascinating. It’s worth looking at https://spaceweather.com for instance to find out about auroras, meteor showers, asteroids and Sunspots.
Another old painting. This was from about eleven years ago. The planet has only completed part of its orbit around the sun since I painted it. I don’t know why I paint astronomical objects, they are hard to do! Acrylic on canvas. This was my attempt at Jupiter. This banded gas giant is renowned for its great red spot (a storm that has been shrinking for a few centuries). I think painting planets is like knitting, trying to fit the right pattern in the right place. I also don’t think my paint is blended enough. I have lots of astronomical paintings, I need someone to be interested in them!
I was reading a fellow bloggers post about a book that describes the complexity of the middle ages and how peoples freedom was affected by their ability to sell goods locally. I’m afraid I am struggling to understand the explanations.
It led me to think about a book I’m currently reading called Green Mars. It is the second of a trilogy about terraforming Mars by Kim Stanley Garner. The ideas in the second book Green Mars go into a lot of details about transnational companies becoming the defacto rulers of Mars. The population of earth are split between the rich who have had gerantological treatments and the poor who only have slight access to them. It’s amazing how thought through the future civilisation is. But it’s densely argued, even with a well plotted history including a brief third world war.
I’m only half way through the book, having read the first book in the trilogy, Red Mars, a few years ago. It’s my second attempt to read it. I’d read the first chapter during lock down but couldn’t get into the book. I think it’s worth reading if you don’t want rip roaring sci-fi, but a densely imagined history of the characters that use their scientific knowledge to terraform the planet. Reading about varieties of variously genetically enhanced people plants and lichens is fascinating if you have the inclination to read it.
I have Blue Mars on the bookshelves somewhere, I might try and read it one day.
Digital mosaic of a coastline. I was watching a programme about Nasa’s Perseverence Rover on Mars tonight and saw that it is due to try and climb the delta into a crater on Mars called Jezero crater. It struck me how the martian landscape is very similar to ours. There was water on the planet a few billion years ago which filled the crater. This could be one of the places where they find evidence of life on Mars.
What do you see? I see an archipelago of small islands in a deep blue sea. I think there are rocky shores and shallow waters around the islands.
Or it simply could be blue paint peeling off an old metal door. You can see the metal surface is made up of crystals, or perhaps its a decorative feature on the metal doors surface.
Or it could be strange clouds on a distant blue planet. Looking down from above or up at an azure sky.
Imagination is fun.
I was trying to draw Virga clouds yesterday for a post here, but to be honest it wasn’t working. I gave up leaving a scribbled shape with conical bits hanging down. Today I doodled blue lines and blue shadows onto it, added segments and an eye and a head. The red is from the previous page but it could be antennae? The resulting creature seems to be floating. It could be in a sea or floating in the air. I’ve decided it’s a Neptunian…. A creature from the gas giant planet Neptune. I imagine it has a prehensile snout and it eats hydrocarbons from carbonbergs floating in the Neptunian skies. The long prong like legs are to grab the bergs as they sail by….
Mallaband-Brown