Intermission - Super Acrylic Nebula Finished

Holy smokes, it's alive!  I will resume posting here in about a month.  There will be changes.  Things will be better.

In the meantime, I have finished the acrylic painting of the Orion Nebula.

I started this painting nearly a year ago (last October, to be precise), when I was painting several variations of the Orion Nebula.  What inspired me was a false-color image of the Nebula's "tracer bullets"–globs of stellar dust shooting across space–colored in bright orange and blue.  You can read more about the tracer bullet phenomenon in this article by the Faulkes Telescope Project.

There was some pre-planning to this painting, but not a lot.  I was afraid I would procrastinate on it and end up not doing it out of various fears, so I pushed ahead as fast as I could.  The lack of pre-planning made certain stages later on more difficult.  Even so, I do not regret starting it so quickly.

This was not a complicated painting.  I had the blue-and-orange Nebula, and the astronaut and his spacecraft.  I went back and forth painting layers for the Nebula and the dark blue of deep space, and the spacecraft.  Halfway through the painting, the orange and the blue were mixing together and becoming a muddy green.  I went back, whited the muddy parts out, and repainted them.  The final stages of the painting were lighting up the blue nebula bullets, and adding the off-white highlights on the astronaut and spacecraft.

What I learned from this painting:

• Prime the canvas the main background color.  This prevents the bright white canvas from throwing off how colors appear to your eyes.
• Develop the underpainting as much as you need to.  It is the foundation your painting will stand on.  I did not develop it for this painting, and it made finishing the spacecraft much more difficult.
• Don't leave your wet palette alone for weeks on end.  The paint becomes runny and useless for painting.  The palette gets smelly and moldy, and you have to delay working on the painting in order to clean the paper and sponge.

With these lessons in mind, I can do that much better on the next space painting.

Engaging Hibernation Protocols

This blog is going to go silent for a while while I work out what I want to do with it.  I still want to make science-fiction art, and write science-fiction stories...however, I haven't focused in on what I want beyond that basic desire, and that's not doing this blog much good.  It's too unfocused, mechs one week, astronauts the next.  I don't know if it bothers anyone else, but it bothers me, because I feel like I'm not doing it right.  I'm just taking shots in the dark, instead of presenting something worthwhile to look at.

So I will be back.  No question about that.  It will likely be a few months, maybe more than a few, but I will return, and when I do, I will have a purpose and a focus for this sci-fi blog.  I'll see you then.

Fighter Patrol

Hashed this out quick, two heavy starfighters on a casual patrol.  Based off a photo of a pair of F-14 Tomcats in a similar formation.

Sketch 1/18/16: Fast Landing

A quick experiment.  I started with abstract watercolor shapes, and added the ships in ink afterwards.  It was only when I was laying the water texture down that I realized, "Wait a minute, the main cruise spaceship is accelerating towards the ocean..."

I've got it.  The captain was a washout from the local starfighter-force program.  His cruise ship's passengers forever suffer (or enjoy, depending on temperament) him living out his inane fantasies of piloting the lumbering starliner like a nimble starfighter.  Yeah.  That's it.

Sketch 1/11/16: Demon Guitar

Short on time today.  Here's my take on a heavy metal sorceress, complete with a leather vest, dead dragon, and demon guitar.

Mercenary Mechs: Sunspot Crusher

Continuing the theme of gouache-giant-robot-paintings, I present Sunspot Crusher, the sniper-mech.  It's mostly elbows and knees and looks a bit goofy, but when you're packing the most power anti-armor laser this side of the Rockies (mounted in the right-shoulder wedge), you can get away with looking goofy.  The laser is, however, temperamental and expensive to maintain, meaning Crusher has to work all the harder to 1) land contracts and 2) avoid getting hit.

I was a little looser with this painting than the one for Challenger Jax, I tried some blending in the initial stages.  It wasn't 100% what I expected, but I liked part of the final result, and learned something.  Worth it.

Like Challenger Jax, Sunspot Crusher used to be unreasonably huge.  Crusher now would be a little taller than Jax, because it was built lighter, and could be built taller, all to give the pilot a better field of vision, and the laser a better field of fire.

Sketches 12/28/15: Mecha Fun Time

Soldier mech.

Casual sketches for possible Mercenary Mechs.  10% "serious consideration of role of mech in world" and 90% "this looks cool, let's try it".  It is by far the most enjoyable of any sketching.

Samurai mech with lightning/EMP super-sword-weapon.

Gunslinger mech, with extra targeting radar in the "hat" and shoulder fins.

Knight lancer mech with rockets.  Lots of rockets.

Stealth mech with its only (albeit extremely powerful) weapon stuck in its torso.