Braking to Rendezvous

Completed 2018-02-13. Available releases:

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Braking to rendezvous with a station built into a captured asteroid (or possibly a moon) in orbit around Uranus.

Because of the distance to the sun, solar is ineffective. Hence, all power is nuclear. This explains the plus-sized radiators on both the ship and the station. The ship is thrusting toward the viewer, but is moving away, toward the station. The ship's plasma's color is indicative of a hydrogen-rich exhaust, likely a hydrogen NTR. The station has a powerful magnetic field to protect it, producing with the thin upper atmosphere a faint green aurora. There are a few windows near the docking bays (which have to be there, not on-axis, because of the field), but most of the ring is windowless for safety.

I tried rendering diffraction effects by hand. I'm quite pleased with how it came out. The asteroid is also casting a shadow on part of the ring. If you look very closely, you can see that the shadowed side of the station is slightly bluish from the reflected light off the planet. Unfortunately, the thick layering (on the planet especially) produces a reflective surface which doesn't scan well. I apologize for the generally poor quality (and I've tried to clean it up for you with some noise-reduction filters).

To draw, I compose the scene in my head and then spend a lot of time trying to sketch it with pencil, in a way I don't completely hate, on a piece of paper (this is black construction paper, but I had also gotten a gray art-paper pad recently, and I have several woefully-underpopulated white art-paper pads).

( Sketching is, by far, the hardest part for me. I must have erased that stupid ship 5 times, and in the end I live-sketched it from a roll of solder. The planet used string+pencil to get a circular shape, since neither my compass nor my dinner plates were big enough. The station I tried to freehand, but ultimately had to use an ellipse template. )

Then I go back and start coloring with colored pencils (Fantasia brand, 36 colors, a little old but good). Usually I shade lighter colors to darker. I really like the layering effects you can get by using different shades. If I'm paying attention, I erase the normal-pencil sketching lines while I do this. I also have to plan the blank areas first, since the colored pencils don't erase very well. I try to keep the coloring lines going in a supportive direction: for example the aurora's lines are sharp and follow magnetic field lines, whereas the ring is solid gray to evoke a uniform surface.

Then I go back and add bright areas with a white gel pen. In practice, I can't resist doing this somewhat earlier too. If they're too bright, I color over them again with e.g. my black colored pencil a little (e.g. the docking bay on the ring got this treatment). Some dark areas, like e.g. the support structure of the ship's radiators, get a black gel pen. I'm considering getting maybe some other color gel pens too? Yellow would have worked better for the windows, and with red and green I could have added some useless but cinematic docking lights.

Then I put it in my scanner and scan it. I open in Photoshop, rotate it 90°, and try various filters/corrections to try to remove the noise and get a faithful color rendition.

I don't really have an artistic background or training. What you're seeing is mentally-calculated effects, not practice. I at least do have a good eye for the way light moves through the scene, owing to my research focus on rendering algorithms. I try to leverage that with lots of bright lights and shadows—abundant in space. For particular objects, I tend to Google for suggested techniques.

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