Thursday, August 20, 2009

Jupiter Fly-by




In early 1979, the first of the Voyager space probes arrived at the planet Jupiter. That year, even before its closest approach, I created this Jupiter space scene inspired by Voyager's visit. The spacecraft in the picture is not Voyager but a design of my own. The artwork was displayed and bought at Boskone, the annual Boston science fiction convention in February. The piece is 8" x 10", watercolor and gouache on illustration board. It is also one of the first pieces where I used an airbrush, which I had recently acquired. The airbrush work is only in the blue glow trailing off the spacecraft. That airbrush, as you will see, was used in countless space pictures. I still have it and it still works after 30 years.

2 comments:

Mike (Altus) said...

Nice piece. I especially like the detail on the planet.

Tristan Alexander said...

Nice space pic. But you need to learn to not cheat with the air brush! Come on, you can get that effect without the tool and it would be even better in the end. Of course, you like techno stuff and I don't :)