Painting of Star Forming Region S106: acrylics + oils
Using an image from the Hubble telescope as my reference, I began dipping my toes into painting the cosmos to practice for my current series in progress, Perspectives. When I first started painting these spacescapes, it was tedious and difficult. In fact, about halfway through I clearly remember asking myself what I was thinking. Yet, I pushed through as I always do and came to a place where I was happy with my product. Now that I've painted a number of them, I am more able to see the process start to finish before I begin, and I can paint through them confidently.
Star Forming Region S106 has been one of the most popular among my viewers and actually recently sold to collector! Super exciting!!
16" x 20" acrylic + oil on canvasA description from NASA's website:
Massive star IRS 4 is beginning to spread its wings. Born only about 100,000 years ago, material streaming out from this newborn star has formed the nebula dubbed Sharpless 2-106 Nebula (S106), featured here. A large disk of dust and gas orbiting Infrared Source 4 (IRS 4), visible in brown near the image center, gives the nebula an hourglass or butterfly shape. S106 gas near IRS 4 acts as an emission nebula as it emits light after being ionized, while dust far from IRS 4 reflects light from the central star and so acts as a reflection nebula. Detailed inspection of a recent infrared image of S106 reveal hundreds of low-mass brown dwarf stars lurking in the nebula's gas. S106 spans about 2 light-years and lies about 2000 light-years away toward the constellation of the Swan (Cygnus).
Doesn't it just blow your mind that these beauties exist way out there? It's one of the many things I reflect on while painting these.
That is so gorgeous!! The dust pattern almost looks like a tree with great roots.
Yes! I thought the same thing! I think it almost looks like a figure with lifted arms too.
I love this! I love spacescapes, and this is fantastic. Keep up the amazing work!
Thank you! Hey, did you see my reply to the Leia print post? You won! If you email me the address you'd like me to ship it to, I'll get it out in the mail :) [email protected]
No I didn't! HOT DIGGITY DAMN! does one helluva a jig in celebration
Haha I was surprised I hadn't heard from ya yet! I'm glad you're excited! Thanks for the support :) :)
Email has been sent with my address, and I can't wait to have it in hand! I've been off Steemit for the last week because I was spending that time with my girlfriend, who came down from Canada to spend the week with me.
No worries!! It's important to get quality time in with important people. I'm just glad we got it figured out. I see it in my inbox! Thanks, should be in the mail beginning of the week!
Nice. Stretched over the wooden frame right? How are you framing them?
Thanks! Yes, it's a stretched canvas. I usually don't frame them as they're gallery wrapped and I paint the edges, but for this one I bought an open frame and secured it in.
I remember hen I painted on stretched canvas in art school. the frame must have been about an inch thick and ended up looking really interesting with all the drips and slipped brush marks- Kind of like a little bit of history telling the story of the painted layers.
Yeah! That will happen! Sometimes I have a hard time covering it up when I do paint the edges to clean it up. It really is cool seeing the history of it.
Great painting, Glad you pushed through. The end result looks really great. You could go work for NASA lol. No just kidding. Love it.
Thanks so much! I'm glad I did too. The cosmos are now my most favorite subject to paint! Maybe if NASA needs a mural... :)