Common Themes

So I’m cheating, I’ve featured Alan Bean, artist and moonwalker before, quite a while ago, but one image just isn’t enough where Bean is concerned! As mentioned in the previous post, one of the best things about his artwork (in my opinion) is the amount of color used on an otherwise muted landscape. These first two display lovely use of color — if you look at the first image and think “grey”, go back and look closer!

Below is an experiment in coloring (one of four.)

This last one exhibits phenomenal lighting — check out his website for the complete (browseable!) catalog!

I was introduced to the artwork of Lynette Cook via APOD. Her visions of extrasolar planets, with accompanying moons and stars as appropriate, are simply fantastic. There’s a press release for the above image, illustrating a recent planetary collision witnessed by astronomers working at Cal Tech, UCLA and Tennessee State University.

Here’s a snippet from her bio:

Today Lynette is best known for her paintings of exoplanets, several of which have accompanied discovery press releases. Her work on this subject began in 1995, following the announcement the first confirmed extrasolar planet orbiting a sunlike star, 51 Pegasi b. She now has a sizeable collection of such artwork to her credit. These, and other astronomical pieces, have been presented throughout the world in books, periodicals, and documentaries published/produced by Astronomy, BBC Television, bild der wissenschaft (Germany), CNN, Cosas (Peru), The Discovery Channel, Eos (Belgium), Japan Public Television, The Learning Channel, PBS, Science et Vie (France), Science News, Sky & Telescope, Time, and US News & World Report, among others. Lynette’s original artwork has been exhibited across the United States as well.

(more…)

A whimsical piece of art for today’s post — it’s simplicity is part of it’s charm, I think.

I was fortunate to see Dave Archer in person as a teen, demonstrating his million-volt reverse-glass space painting. At that time (mid-1990s), his art was all over Star Trek: The Next Generation and I spent almost all my off-time at his booth, looking at his originals (I was working at my mother’s art booth at the same exposition.)

I think what I like so much about his art is the contrast between the clean, detailed planets and the wispy, chaotic gas clouds produced by the electricity. It’s ordered and random, precise and yet running wild, brightly colorful at times and yet so subtle. It still reminds me most of Star Trek, because Dave Archer was all over EVERYTHING in the franchise (or so it seemed at the time; and at that time I was very into ST:TNG), but that’s just a small part of his fantastic portfolio of work. Check it out here!

A beautiful Etsy find that looks like the night sky, and changes depending on the light source. (It also glows in the dark.) Neat stuff!