Space Art: How to Draw and Paint Planets, Moons, and Landscapes of Alien Worlds

Space... the final art frontier... What is it like to walk through an alien world? Artists have been imagining otherworldly landscapes for hundreds of years—but only in the past few decades have we started to see what other planets and moons really look like. These exciting scientific discoveries have led to ever more "realistic" space art. Space Art shows artists how to capture and create these partly real, partly imagined vistas by combining the latest facts with traditional landscape drawing. Put the two together and the results are memorable, dreamlike, haunting. Author Michael Carroll, one of the country's most distinguished astronomical artists, explains how to use washes and texturing, how to paint water and ice, rocks and geological formations, craters and alien skies. Linear and atmospheric perspective, color, composition, color, value, and shading are also covered as they relate to showing otherworldly landscapes. Fourteen paintings, building in complexity, are presented step-by-step, accompanied by NASA photos and the author’s own photos of mysterious landscapes closer to home: Death Valley, Iceland, Alaska. For everyone who has ever wanted to travel to far-off worlds... or just show what they’re imagining... Space Art is a rocket to the stars.