Initial Sketches:
After doing some research into current concepts about manned missions to Mars and potential spacecraft configurations, I did a couple of pencil sketches.
"Mars Rocks!" - This composition includes rocks from pictures taken on Mars by the Sojourner Rover on the Pathfinder mission.
"Mars: The Desert Beckons"
Studies of Mesas & Buttes:
I wanted to use mesa and butte geology as a basis for the landscape, so I did some compositional sketches on the computer, using Terragen. The data came from Digital Elevation Maps of Monument Valley.
Final Study:
The final compositional study, also done on the computer, is a digital collage, built up from a number of photographs of mesas and buttes in Monument Valley, rocky Martian terrain from the Pathfinder mission, and a picture of the craft envisioned by the Mars Direct organization (altered to show extended landing legs).
The craft has probably slowed its descent by using an aerobraking shell, already discarded, and then the parachutes. The parachutes have recently been released and are collapsing.
photo courtesy of Stony Brook Elementary School
Painting Day:
To help celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight, the Stony Brook Elementary School in Hopewell Township, NJ, invited me to spend the day painting, and talking with the students about spaceflight, astronomy, and how I create space art.
photo courtesy of Stony Brook Elementary School
Underpainting:
After transfering the major shapes of the composition to the canvas board from a large print of the study, I used Dioxizine Purple to roughly paint the dark/light values.
It was fun asking the kids what planet they thought it was, and then when they guessed Mars, asking "But is Mars purple? Why am I painting it puple?" (Answer: painting red-orange over the purple creates a much more dynamic, lively surface.)
photo courtesy of Stony Brook Elementary School
Laying in the Sky:
I used a fairly large brush to quickly lay in the blend of colors in the sky.
End of the Day:
This is how far I got, after working all day, since somewhere around 80 percent of the time was spent conversing with the students and answering their questions.
I got a small break to get more of the land painted near the end of the day when they had a holiday concert .
Toning Down the Sky:
I worked over the strong sky colors with pale tints of yellow. At this stage I've also finished the foreground rocks and added some detail to the mesas on the left and right. The sky near the horizon still needs some more work to tone down the saturated yellow there.
The sky was purposefully done with strong colors underneath, so I could allow some of that color to show through the small broken strokes of built-up paler color.
Finished Painting:
Up until the end, I wasn't sure whether the spacecraft would be the one in my pencil sketch or the Mars Direct version.
The kids had "ooh"ed and "ah"ed when I showed them the pencil sketch, so I decided to use that.
Final note: The photograph accentuates the broken color in the sky - it's actually a bit smoother than that.
Here's a detail of the lander:
