Summer 2014

Hayabusa on 25143 Itokawa. Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

Painted for M. Thompson. Displayed at The Art of Planetary Science 2013.

Protoplanetary Disk #2. Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

Painted for K. Miller. Displayed at The Art of Planetary Science 2013.

Asteroid during a Planetary Flyby #3. Acrylic on canvas. 2014.

Painted for LPSC talk title slide (Keane & Matsuyama 2014).

Asteroid during a Planetary Flyby #2. Oil on canvas. 2013.

Painted for my oral PhD prelim exam. This was my first oil painting, in a very long time.

(alternate view of Asteroid during a Planetary Flyby #2)

Asteroid during a Planetary Flyby #1. Acrylic on Canvas. 2013.

Painted for my DPS 2013 (Denver) talk title slide (Keane & Matsuyama 2013).

Field Notebook Sketch: View from the Intersection of Saddle Rd. & Mauna Kea Access Rd., Hawaii. Black colored pencil in Rite-in-the-Rain notebook. 2014.

Field Notebook Sketch: Lava channel over scarp, South of Mauna Ulu Overlook, Hawaii. Graphite pencil in Rite-in-the-Rain notebook. 2014.

Field Notebook Sketch: Littoral Cone, Hawaii. Graphite pencil in Rite-in-the-Rain notebook. 2014.

Field Guide Cover, LPL Hawaii Field trip. Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Field Guide Cover, LPL Hawaii Field trip. Colored pencil on paper, with text added digitally (yes, Comic Sans was on purpose). 2014.

Io Observer Mission Patch Draft #1. Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Sketched, in preparation for the NASA/JPL Planetary Science Summer School I will attend in August 2014.

SPIN-DR logo ideas #1. Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Sketched for T. Rogers, for her research group.

SPIN-DR logo ideas #2. Black colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Sketched for T. Rogers, for her research group.

SPIN-DR logo ideas #3. Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Sketched for T. Rogers, for her research group.

SPIN-DR logo idea #3, digitally augmented. Colored pencil on paper, augmented digitally. 2014.

For T. Rogers, and her research group.

The Origin of the Lunar Figure #2 (a). Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Draft summary figure for Keane & Matsuyama, in prep. I will post more details about these figures once the paper is accepted...

The Origin of the Lunar Figure #2 (d & e). Colored pencil on paper. 2014.

Draft summary figure for Keane & Matsuyama, in prep. I will post more details about these figures once the paper is accepted...

Poster (#1) for The Art of Planetary Science, 2014. Digital media. 2014.

Poster for The Art of Planetary Science: the Exhibition. See http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/art/ for more details.

Poster (#2) for The Art of Planetary Science, 2014. Digital media. 2014.

Poster for The Art of Planetary Science: the Exhibition. See http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/art/ for more details.

The Long Overdue Update

It has been far too long since I've updated this blog.  So it goes...

Protoplanetary disk.  Acrylic on canvas.  2012.

 I painted this for use as my title-slide for my 2012 LPLC talk.

Protoplanetary disk.  Acrylic on canvas.  2012.

 I painted this for use as my title-slide for my 2012 LPLC talk.

Asteroid collision (and the formation of an asteroid family). Acrylic on canvas. 2012.

I painted this for Melissa D. for her PhD candidacy exam.

Asteroid collision (and the formation of an asteroid family). Acrylic on canvas. 2012.

I painted this for Melissa D. for her PhD candidacy exam.

Saturn, as viewed from Iapetus.  Acrylic on canvas. 2012.

I painted this for Meghan C.

A planet within a protoplanetary disk.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this for my title-slide of my 2013 AAS: Long Beach talk.  I later gave this to Ilaria. P.

A planet within a protoplanetary disk.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this for my title-slide of my 2013 AAS: Long Beach talk.  I later gave this to Ilaria. P.

Mission to Venus.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Kelly M.

Canadian on the Moon.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Michelle T.

Dinosaur.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Lauren W.

Las Campanas Observatory.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Maxine W.

Beach.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Brad. B.

Mt. Cameroon.  Acrylic on canvas.  2013.

I painted this as a gift for Peggy and Jim. M.

Exoplanet.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Tiffany K.

MRO over Mars.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

I painted this as a gift for Ali B.

Genius (unfinished).  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

For Tami R.

Genius.  Acrylic on canvas. 2013.

For Tami R.

Death Valley.  Colored pencil on sketch paper. 2012.

For the cover of the LPL Death Valley field trip, spring 2012.

LPL field trip logo.  Colored pencil on printer paper. 2012.

For the LPL Death Valley field trip, spring 2012.

Moon over Tucson.  Colored pencil on sketch paper. 2012.

For the cover of the LPL Circum-Tucson field trip, fall 2012.

Mojave.  Colored pencil on sketch paper. 2013.

For the cover of the LPL Mojave/Remote-Sensing field trip, spring 2013.

Endeavour.  Dry erase marker, on smart-board. 2012.

Doodled on dry erase board, before a class I TA-ed for.

On to 2012...

Happy New Year! My first semester of grad school is done, and I finally have forced myself to post an update. As I should have expected, I didn't have much time to do a lot of artwork during the semester beyond the occasional doodle, or overly elaborate drawings/plots for homework assignments. One fun craft project I did do was to make two little models of OSIRIS-REx, which is an upcoming mission to a near-Earth asteroid (dryly named 1999 RQ36), run out of my department. The first model was a quick little model that I made out of an old Oatmeal box, a coffee-stirring stick, lots of hot glue, and my colored pencils (or as my Canadian office-mate insists they be called: pencil crayons):

I made it to go along with an asteroid-like candy-filled piñata for LPL's annual Bratfest. Here's a photo of me, at Braftest, wearing a Bratfest t-shirt, next to the piñata and little O-REx.

(don't worry, I removed it from the piñata prior to its destruction.)

Since I had so much fun making this little OSIRIS-REx, and I was in need of a birthday gift for my office-mate Kelly (who works for the principle investigator of this mission), I decided to do a much more detailed version of O-REx. This was harder to do since there are not that many images of the spacecraft out, so I was working predominantly from their mission patch, and their press-release videos...

Once the semester actually ended, and I wound up back in Presidential-primary-ad-laiden Iowa, I finally had some actual time to do some drawing. Using my brand new sketchbook (which I got as a birthday gift from a certain baker), along with some new pens from my parents, I got going on some sketches...

Some of my notable earlier works were very detailed 'technical' drawings of either spacecraft or just random industrial scenes. A lot of these (both then and now) were inspired by a lot of science fiction movies that I have seen, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Alien, etc. I decided that I'd give these technical drawings another shot...

This is just of some (brightly colored) futuristic corridor.

A landing spacecraft, very much inspired by the Nostromo.

A rotating spacecraft (to generate artificial gravity), with the crew-capsule on the near-side, and the fuel tanks and power supply on the far-side.

With these above images, I'm usually making them up as I go along. I may have some general ideas (e.g., I want a rotating spacecraft, or I want a floating catwalk, etc.), but I really am just improvising as I go along. I also do not use a ruler (although I did for some lines in the rotating spacecraft, since I wanted my perspectives to be decent). Since I have my nice prismacolors, I can't help using them to either give background color or just flat-out coloring everything, with my usual over-saturated colors.

After doing these sort of cold technical drawings, I decided to change it up, and draw something from life. I wanted to do something I haven't done before, and that was a bit more challenging... so I took out my ink pens and did two fairly quick gesture drawings of very large closeups of two necklaces I've had. The first one is has a shark's tooth (from Florida), and the second a cowrie shell (from Cameroon, where I once studied abroad), which I gave as a gift to my best friend. Doing quicker/messier sketches of more natural items was a pretty big change from the stark industrial look of the above drawings.

I actually am more proud of these last two drawings than the previous three technical drawings. They're more outside of my comfort zone, but I think they look good (I'm a fan of the gesture pen strokes I did them in), and more relatable to others. I'll probably do a few more of these quick drawings (they take maybe 30 minutes max) before I get swamped up with work and school again...