Tryptich Progress

I want the painting to have depth.  I've placed another moon in the foreground.  I want it to look liked a place where there could be life.

 It's nearing completion.

Dawn Greeting

For a long time I've been fascinated by the beauty and symmetry of celestial conjunctions.  I suspect he opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey had something to do with this.  I saw that film in Cinerama at the Indiana Theater in it's first week of release.

I did this painting a few years ago.  There are worlds that have spectacular moons like Jupiter and Saturn.  In other parts of the galaxy I assumed some of these had to be in the Goldilocks Zone where our kind of life can exist.  The Kepler Telescope later prove this to be correct.  It seemed to me that on a world where conjunctions like this one could happen, they would strongly effect the religion or mysticism of the people who lived there, hence the simple temple of standing stones and the priestess, or mystic, or whatever you like to call her.  For effect I've made the moons ridiculously large.  The tides alone would probably make this world uninhabitable.  Here the viewer is standing on one of the moons.  The primary is the planet at the horizon with three other moons above it.

 

My original title was Sun-worshiper.  I never liked it.   Why should she be "worshiping".  Perhaps something else is going on here.  A celebration of life and the richness of the universe?

Triptych Progress

I wanted to depict a crowded part of the universe, a planetary system in a star rich arm of a galaxy.  I decided to paint a blue gas giant with several moons.  At this stage they still need surface details.

These photos were taken with a small electronic camera in a confined space. (My studio)  Sometimes I used flash, sometimes not.  There is always glare from somewhere.  If its not the flash its the bright overhead lights I use.  For a final shot to advertize a piece or to save it for my portfolio a lot more care is taken to capture the colors and detail accurately.