A quick rendering to salute those who have passed and those still with us, who were involved in the safe return of Apollo13! Definitely a moment of pride in the great history of NASA, and inspiration for all those who watched.
#spaceart #sciart #scienceart #NASA #NASAart #spacexart #spacex #rocketart #planetart #planetaryart #apollomissions #moonlanding #spaceexploration #mannedspaceflight #nasahistory #adastra #moontomars #inspace #orbit #spacecraft #liftoff #launch #astronaut #apolloanniversary #moonmissions #marsmissions #theartofmars

Here is a quick, short list of podcasts that I find helpful in developing as an artist:
Artists Helping Artists - this is the one I most consistently listen to. Rubber hits the road type help on how to survive as an artist, especially regarding online presence
Bobby Chiu - Chiustream - lots of great interviews and industry/craft insights
Pencil Kings - Artist interviews that uncover the story behind their works
The Collective Podcast by Ash Thorpe - interviews with creative industry leaders
The Practical Creative Podcast - conversations with people who are actively making and doing creative work
a Musing- conversations on creativity
Art Café - open table discussions in the artist community
The Not Starving Artist - interviews from all genres

no words... I think that's how most people who appreciate rare beauty feel today.
Watching images and news about the fire that destroyed much of the cathedral was horrible for all of us. The sense of loss was palpable, especially for those who had visited Notre Dame in Paris.
Now, in the morning after, I am consciously choosing to look forward to seeing people from all over combine, through effort, encouragement and resources, to rebuild what was lost.

The final version of my Apollo 11 piece. View from Neil Armstrong's seat, his face/helmet reflected in the window of the Lunar Module as he looks out at the lunar landscaping zipping past. As he looks for a safe place to land, a fuel alarm is going off (he lands with only 16 seconds of fuel left) and a 1202 program alarm is going off indicating his navigation program is overloaded. It took a cool head at mission control to make the call that it was OK to proceed despite the 1202 alarm in this case.
#spaceart #sciart #scienceart #NASA #NASAart #spacexart #spacex #rocketart #planetart #planetaryart #apollomissions #moonlanding #spaceexploration #mannedspaceflight #nasahistory #adastra #moontomars #inspace #orbit #spacecraft #liftoff #launch #astronaut #apolloanniversary #moonmissions #marsmissions #theartofmars

I watched the movie Apollo 13 for the 48th anniversary of the actual event. Just as good as always - holds up well theough the years. Just as always I cried at the launch scene.
I was familiar with the history behind Gene Kranz’s vest. What I did NOT know was that it is the Smithsonian in DC!
​If you havent seen this movie I highly recommend it.

I gave myself a little treat with some ArtGraf charcoal putty. I could never work with charcoal before because of how it felt; but this.... this stuff is fabulous! Smooth as silk! can mold to any size or shape to get the results you want. Blend it, wet it... one of the best feelings in the world. Super satisfying. I love using it on wet paper, or on dry and then wetting as desired.
So... yeah, I super recommend this stuff! ArtGraf charcoal putty.

What a special treat to share with family after dinner! Watching SpaceX perform a perfect triple landing with Falcon Heavy on its first commercial launch, its second launch. the two Falcon Heavy boosters returned to land at Kennedy Space Center and the core stage landed on SpaceX's drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You". What a thrilling thing to watch. the launch and landings were all absolutely stunning viscerally and visually.

Humanity's first ever glimpse at a black hole, thanks to the Event Horizon Radio Telescope. Talk about awe-inspiring! A reminder that space exploration includes exploring through telescopes, through robotic exploration and through human space exploration. All three can provide us with that sense of wonder!

Today we are expecting two very exciting events in space exploration and understanding.
SpaceX will attempt its second launch (and its first commercial launch), and we are expecting the announcement of the first pictures of an actual blackhole. Being able to see these events brings home the importance of visuals in our understanding of space and our desire to understand space...
Perfect time to share a small quote from a column by Priyamvada Natarajan.
She is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale and the author of “Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas That Reveal the Cosmos.”
The quote:
"This happened more than 400 years ago, when Galileo presented six watercolor images of the moon as he saw it through his repurposed spyglass — which we now know as a telescope. It happened about 200 years later, when Louis Daguerre made the first astronomical photograph — also of the moon. And it happened in 1990, with the first image of the infant universe, taken by a NASA satellite, and in 2017, with the Hubble Space Telescope’s images of clusters of galaxies.
On Wednesday, images from the Event Horizon Telescope have the potential to redefine the cosmos once again, and prompt wonder and curiosity about our place in it."
Priyamvada Natarajan

So why am I reviewing and diving into a book on the Wyeth Tradition? Because the artists like Pyle, Wyeth and Rockwell understood how to bring out the wonder of the human condition, the human form. How to tell a wonderful story about humans in their seemingly un-wonderfulness.
That's what I want to accomplish with my art.... I guess... but maybe in reverse.
I want to take wonderful, unusual scenarios of the space age; and show the human side of things. How the humans involved in wonderful things are wonderful not because they are in an exciting scenario, but are wonderful because they are just humans doing their best. Somehow I need to be able to show that the technical and scientific side of things , while exciting because its technical achievement, but mostly because it's humans pulling it off!

So hard to get to the point where we are O.K. with things not immediately looking fantastic or precisely as envisioned! This rather difficult piece is really waiting til the last details to look as I intended but it really is getting there!
It's the interior of the Apollo Lunar Module ("Eagle"). The viewer of the art is in Neil Armstrong's position, looking out at the lunar surface zipping by as he searches for a safe landing spot (he finally landed with only 16 seconds of fuel left!) In the window we see Neil in his helmet. On his helmet is the reflection of the control panel with the fuel alarm and a program 1202 alarm (the 1202 alarm was saying the navigation computer was overloaded -it took a cool head with an insanely good memory to know this particular code would be OK as long as it did not persist, most would think it was cause to abort the moon mission). Reflected in the rolled up window shield is Neil's hand on the control taking the lunar module in for a white-knuckle landing. Capcom Charlie Duke responded to Armstrong's "the Eagle has landed" with "thanks, you had a lot of guys turning blue down here".