Artsnova Digital Art and Space

Trouvelot astronomical illustration: Sonne III

Earlier this evening while doing research for my upcoming presentation on space art at the International Space Development Conference (see Art and the Promotion of Space Exploration), I was looking for information about Étienne Trouvelot, an astronomical artist active during the 1870’s. Quite to my surprise, I found a small gallery of his art at the New York Public Library web site. The 15 images are all from his book The Trouvelot astronomical drawings published in 1881 by Scribner’s Sons.

Of the images contained in the gallery, my two favorites are Mare Humorum, from a lunar study made in 1875, and The planet Mars, drawn based on observations from September 3, 1877. To view these and the rest of the images, visit New York Public Library’s Trouvelot Astronomical Drawings gallery.

P.S. Trouvelot is perhaps more well known as being the individual responsible for the accidental introduction of the gypsy moth to North America.

Ad Astra, Jim

Mistress Moon

I have just completed adding three new pieces of astronomical art to my Artsnova Space Gallery. These are not new art but art that I had not previously added to my web site. In fact I still have a backlog of art to add. I am also planning on adding at least two new galleries in the near future. One will be a portrait gallery and the other will be an Americana gallery.

Following are thumbnails of the three new images. Clicking the thumbnail will take you to the pictures details page where you can see a larger version of the image.

Mistress Moon

In Mistress Moon I have recreated an antiqued rendition of our Moon. Mistress Moon started out as a photograph of a moon globe. When I started working the piece I had no strong idea of what I wanted to accomplish. And therein lies the beauty of working digitally - the degree to which I can experiment with different styles and effects is far greater than the traditional artist can achieve. As I worked the final concept slowly evolved until finally I knew what impression I wanted to create.

Rorschach Moon

Rorschach Moon was created using a pastel-oriented palette of colors. You have probably heard the story of how the Beatles song A Day in the Life was actually the product of the merger of two different songs. Rorschach Moon is similar in that it started out as two different works of art. Individually I had been working on creating a nebula experimenting with different techniques. I was simultaneously working on an image of the Moon. As I was doing so it hit me that I was employing similar coloring techniques on both images. It was at that point that I decided to combine the two into one and to produce a final unified piece.

Sands of Mars by Jim Plaxco

Unlike the two previous images, Sands of Mars is based on an actual photograph of the surface of Mars. I have long been a lecturer on the subject of Mars and have prided myself on illustrating my presentations with images created from the raw data files returned by the various robotic missions to Mars. This freed me from having to rely on the finished images offered up by the various NASA science and PR organizations.

I was searching through the newly released online archives of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at the Planetary Data System Imaging Node when I came across a MRO Context Camera (CTX) image that I found particularly arresting. I downloaded the PDS IMG file and converted it to a GIF using NASAVIEW. I then used Photoshop to crop, contrast enhance, clean, and colorize the image. Colorization consisted of using multiple coloring layers and masks to achieve the final effect. I must say that I am far more pleased with this image than the one that NASA included in their Mars As Art gallery (my entry appears on gallery page 2, last row, middle image). Of course this image did not exist at that time.

I hope that you enjoy the art and these brief explanations of the process by which they were created.

Ad Astra, Jim

NASA Lunar Base

A 1949 Gallup poll of Americans found that only 15% of the public believed that man would walk on the Moon by 2000. How is it that we accomplished this by 1969? Of course the Cold War and a series of Soviet space firsts played the lead role. But space art also played a role in providing for the population a visualization of what space exploration could be like.

Space art still has a role to play in exposing the public to the vision of what it would mean to truly become a spacefaring civilization. There is a precedent for art’s ability to shape public policy. One of my favorite artists is Thomas Moran, an outstanding painter of the Hudson River School. One of Moran’s landscape subjects was Yellowstone, which he visited as part of an expedition in 1871. His paintings of the landscape had such an impact on the public that in 1872 Yellowstone was made our nation’s first national park. If you would like to know more about Thomas Moran and his art, I recommend the book Thomas Moran.

Peter A. Nisbet, a well known landscape artist who was part of the NASA Art Program, said that “Art is about what words cannot express. Many things have happened in the exploration of space that people cannot know through photographs or newspapers/television reporting. It is the artist’s task to bring forth the mysterious, the exalted, the great beauty and power surrounding these events.”

Later this month I will be attending the International Space Development Conference in Washington D.C. While it has not yet been confirmed, I expect to be giving a presentation on space art and its power to promote space exploration. Titled Using Art to Promote Space Exploration, the presentation is part history, part call to action. To be considered for a programming slot, I had to submit a 500 word abstract. Imagine my surprise when upon finishing the abstract I discovered that I was over 1,000 words. Heavy handed editing got me down to the 500 world limit. Following is the abstract that I submitted.

Title: Using Art to Promote Space Exploration
Author: Jim Plaxco
Abstract:

In the beginning there was astronomical art whose purpose was to illustrate planetary bodies and astronomical concepts. With the advent of science fiction space art came into being as a means of illustrating fictional space ships and off-Earth habitations.

In the 1950’s space art migrated from the realm of science fiction to science when artists were commissioned to create illustrations for non-fiction books describing space exploration. A peak of public relations was reached during this period with a series of articles in Collier’s Magazine which became the basis for a subsequent series of programs created by Disney for television.

In 1962 NASA created the NASA Art Program to document and celebrate the events and activities of the space program. This and other art commissioned by NASA has been used for multiple purposes including: technical illustration of hardware; public affairs imagery promoting particular programs; capturing the emotional impact of space exploration; illustrating scientific discoveries.

Throughout the space age art has been used as a means of visualizing and promoting space exploration. The target of this art has been both the public and public policy decision makers. This art focused on the Apollo program during the 1960’s; the Shuttle program during the 1970’s; the International Space Station during the 1980’s and 1990’s; and the Vision for Space Exploration during the 2000’s. Today the main customers for professional non-fictional space art are space agencies, aerospace companies, and those publications that cover the field.

Recent years has seen the addition of marketing the images returned by various robotic missions as art. The initial such project was “Mars As Art” which used Mars Odyssey THEMIS data. Subsequently “The Sun As Art“, “Landsat: Earth As Art” and “Our Earth As Art” programs were launched. These programs raise public interest in space exploration. This is best exhibited by the extensive media and public attention that images from the Hubble Space Telescope have garnered.

In addition to commissioning art to illustrate its programs, NASA has also sponsored art contests targeting students. The positive relationship between space exploration and student interest in science is a long accepted one. By sponsoring these contests, NASA is spurring student interest in science, art, and space exploration, as well as heightening awareness of their own programs.

NASA has leveraged art to satisfy multiple objectives. The space activist community should take advantage of these lessons. NSS has embarked on a program of support for the space arts. In addition to the traditional venue of commissioning art for Ad Astra, recent years have seen space art programming and shows at the ISDCs. Additionally NSS has conducted two successful Space Settlement Art Contests. NSS leveraged the art submitted to these contests by building corresponding art galleries on the NSS web site and using the winning art to publish calendars promoting space settlement.

As chair of the NSS Web Oversight Committee, I plan to advocate for the creation of a Student Space Art Gallery to spur student interest in art and space exploration.

Moon Base Illustration

The art used to illustrate this post is of an advanced lunar base and was used as an illustration in the 1992 multivolume NASA publication Space Resources. The entire publication is available as a PDF download from the NSS Space Resources Library.

Ad Astra, Jim

Earthrise Over the Moon

Yesterday I finished up my part in the judging of entries in the NASA Life and Work on the Moon student art contest. The theme of the contest was portrayals of people living and working on the Moon. There were some interesting submissions to the contest. There were a few submissions that ignored the fact that this was an “art” contest and instead submitted presentations, pamphlets, etc. While these were outside the bounds of the contest, it was a pleasure to read through these and learn about what these persons considered to be the benefits of humans living on the Moon. For more contest details, visit the NASA art contest site The Moon: Back to the Future.

We judges were to grade the artist’s submissions based on four different criteria: artist statement; artistic elements; creativity; validity. Scoring was 20 points for the artist statement, 30 points for artistic elements, 30 points for creativity, and 20 points for validity.

Artist Statement

The artist statement was a written explanation of the submitteed art. Unfortunately some artists failed to provide a statement. I’m not sure why someone would spend a substantial amount of time creating an artwork to submit to the contest and then not take the comparatively small amount of time to explain the nature of their submission. The artist statements spanned a wide gamut from simple explanations of the image to complex explanations of the artist’s thinking and planning process.

Artistic Elements

Judging the artistic elements involved evaluating the artist’s use of line, shape, color, texture, etc. For me this represented the most difficult component to judge because such components are highly dependent on the observer’s values.

Creativity

Being creative while adhering to the contest’s rules for validity can be a challenge. One of the more creative submissions was an art deco style advertisement for tangtini - a drink composed of Tang and vodka. Unfortunately the connection between the piece and theme of living and working on the Moon was rather tenuous.

Validity

As the theme of the contest was living and working on the Moon, the submitted artwork was expected to be realistic in its depiction of the nature of the lunar environment and what living there would be like. Artists had to balance being creative while staying within the bounds of reality. Judging the validity of some submitted art was challenging in this category. For example, there was a very nicely done terraformed moon. But just how valid is that? Unfortunately that piece did not depict any human presence on the Moon.

I must say I enjoyed the experience of being a judge in the contest. The last contest I had an opportunity to judge was the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest which ended in January. Every artist should take a crack at being a judge in an art contest. It is one thing to look at a picture and say “Oh I like that” and quite another thing to analyze the picture’s composition and artistic elements with the goal of assigning a grade to the picture. The process can be very instructive.

About Earthrise Over the Moon

I created Earthrise Over Moon to illustrate this blog entry. As a source I used one of the HDTV images from the JAXA Selene (aka Kaguya) mission to the Moon. I then brought the picture into Adobe Photoshop and used the “Find Edges” filter to create an outline map of the areas of contrast change in the source image. I then used several custom brushes of my own creation to digitally paint the picture. For my Photoshop brushes, I used custom brush tip shapes and activated the Shape Dynamics, Scattering, Texture, and Color Dynamics options. These brush controls were set to be sensitive to pen pressure as I was using a Wacom stylus to paint the picture.

Ad Astra, Jim

The Apollo 11 mission patch

The Challenger Center is hosting a Student Art Contest in support of space tourist Richard Garriott’s upcoming space flight. Richard is best known as the creator of the massive multi-player online game Ultima. I’ve never met Richard but I have met his father Owen Garriott who first flew in space on a Skylab mission. Owen’s second and last trip into space was in 1983 on the Spacelab-1 mission.

We’ve come a long way since then because Richard Garriott will be going into space as a tourist. While Richard is not the first space tourist, he will be the first person to travel to space whose father also traveled to space. Set to depart October 12, 2008, Richard will have tourist class accommodations on the less than roomy Russian Soyuz. His final destination is the uxorious International Space Station Resort located in low Earth orbit. His one week vacation is said to cost around $30 million. It’s grand to be witness to the birth of a new industry - space tourism. I only wish that it had happened sooner. For a lower cost alternative trip to space, I recommend one of the suborbital flights to be offered by Virgin Galactic. For more information about the space flight of Richard Garriott, check out Richard Garriott’s Space Mission web site.

The Challenger Center’s involvement is that Garriott will be working with classes at the fifty Challenger Learning Centers around the world as a part of a “Garriott Science Challenge” program. Science related classes will be conducted as a part of the program before, during, and after Richard’s trip to ISS.

In conjunction with the “Garriott Science Challenge”, the Challenger Center is conducting a Student Art Contest. The objective of the contest is for students to submit designs for a space patch. The contest, which was announced March 8, has a deadline of April 18. For contest rules and to enter the contest, see Challenger Center Student Art Contest Rules and Submission Form. Designs already submitted can be viewed at Garriott Challenge Student Design Gallery. Note that at the time of this post, no entries have been submitted.

Ad Astra, Jim

After the Storm: Grand Prize Winner
used with artist’s permission

The winners of the National Space Society Space Settlement Art Contest have just been announced. As one of the five judges for the contest, my job was to vote on the best 12 works of space art out of the 69 submitted.

My fellow judges for the contest included space artist Don Davis, my friend and fellow space artist David Robinson, the Chair of the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee Bart Leahy, and Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, Executive Director of Yuri’s Night.

There were two rounds of judging. The first round consisted of voting for the grand prize image, a best in category image for each of the contest categories: Orbital Settlement, Lunar Settlement, Martian Settlement, and Asteroid Settlement; and voting for another 7 images for inclusion in the calendar. For the second round judges were presented with the top 12 vote getting images and were asked to vote again for the one grand prize picture and the four best of category pictures.

For my part, choosing the image to receive the grand prize presented no difficulty what so ever. After the Storm by Raymond Cassel was clearly the best entry in the contest. The image was original, realistic in its depiction of dealing with the consequences of a martian dust storm, and technically well executed. Obviously my fellow judges were in agreement on this one. I asked Raymond if it would be okay with him if I used his image to illustrate this blog entry and he kindly agreed.

The winning image in the Lunar Settlement category was The Lunar Greenhouse by Jonathan Chapin. For the Orbital Settlement category, Goetz Scheuermann won with his O’Neill Style Cylinder Colony. In the Mars Settlement category, Martian Evening by Timothy Hodg won. Bryan Versteeg took the prize in the Asteroid Settlement category with his Asteroid Mining for Station Creation.

Of the four categories, choosing a winner for the Asteroid Settlement category was the hardest because the three contending images were all so good. Of course the best aspect of the contest was all the new space art that got created. You can see all the artwork that was submitted to the contest, as well as the rest of the winning images, at the Gallery for Space Settlement 2009 Calendar Art Contest. You may also want to read the press release about the contest winners.

In closing, I would like to congratulate not only the contest winners but all the artists who took the time to create and submit entries to the Space Settlement Art Contest.

Ad Astra, Jim

Mars Global Surveyor Image:
Spring Thaw in Northwestern Planum Australe

Saturday I taught the first of a two part four hour class on astronomical image processing at the Adler Planetarium. The class, No Telescope, No Camera? No Problem: Making Astronomical Art with Your PC covers locating and downloading planetary and astronomical image data from the Internet and then using various image processing techniques to create finished pictures.

The first session covered both the basics of image processing and manipulation with Adobe Photoshop and how to use these techniques to transform raw PDS (Planetary Data System) image files into attractive colorized pictures. An added bonus was that these techniques are also applicable to the processing of images produced by digital cameras. The class consisted of both a lecture component and a demonstration component. Images used during the class were all downloaded from NASA JPL PDS Missions site.

For the demonstration component of the class, I demonstrated the following techniques:

• contrast enhancement and colorization of a single Viking Lander image of the Martian surface
• combining separate red, green, and blue Viking Lander images in order to produce a color picture while employing the contrast manipulation techniques previously illustrated
• combining red and blue filter images from the Mars Global Surveyor Wide Angle Camera and synthesizing a green channel to create a color picture
• using a Galileo image of asteroid Gaspra to explain enlarging and sharpening.

For some of the techniques, I showed that there was more than one way to get the job done and that the choice of methods really depended on the picture that was being worked. There was a lot of ground to cover and the class ran longer than its scheduled two hours. In addition to using Photoshop, I used both GIMP (with the PDS plug-in) and NASAView software to demonstrate how to open PDS image files and save them in standard graphics formats.

One of the exercises was to create a color picture of Mars by combining the image data from two Mars Global Surveyor Wide Angle Camera images: one taken using the blue filter, the other using the red filter. A small section of that picture is shown above. For purposes of comparison, you can compare this image with the Spring Thaw in Northwestern Planum Australe version posted on the Malin Space Science Systems web site.

Part two of the class will be held this Saturday and will cover the processing of astronomical images stored in the FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format. For a list of this and other classes currently available from the Adler Planetarium, visit their classes page.

Moon Base Art - David Robinson

Time for traditional artists to grab their brushes and digital artists to grab their digital brushes. The National Space Society is sponsoring its second space art contest. Like the first space art contest last year, the submitted art is to depict space settlements in our solar system and unlike so many other art contests, this one is free. Yep, there is no submission fee. Art is to be submitted in one of four categories: lunar settlements, Mars settlements, asteroid settlements, or orbital settlements. Twelve winning images will be chosen and used to illustrate the NSS 2009 Space Settlement Calendar. FYI, the NSS 2008 Space Settlement Art Calendar has been sold out since early last month.

In the interest of full disclosure, I chaired the NSS Space Settlement Calendar Committee and served as chief judge for the previous contest. This time around, I have limited my participation to serving as a contest judge. My fellow judges are Don Davis, Bart Leahy (this year’s chair and padawan apprentice), Loretta Hidalgo-Whitesides, and my pal David Robinson whose lunar base artwork adorns this post.

This year’s space art contest has a great line up of prizes. There will be twelve winning entries selected: one Grand Prize, four First Prizes, and seven winning entries. Full contest details are available at the NSS Space Settlement Art Contest site.

Here is a great chance for all space artists to create their visions of a spacefaring future - a future where humanity’s home is no longer just the Earth but wherever we choose to live in the expanse of the solar system. But hurry, the deadline for submissions is December 31, 2007.

Think Space!

Ad Astra, Jim

Jim Plaxco on stage with the Music Institute of Chicago Orchestra

I had what for me was a rather singular experience Saturday September 8. That experience was participating in a classical music concert. My role was to provide narration for a piece of music titled Blast Off! and to speak briefly about the planets Jupiter and Mars as a way of introducing the musical pieces Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity and Mars, the Bringer of War - two of the seven planet songs that comprise the orchestral suite The Planets written by Gustav Holst and first performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall in 1918. Why seven planets? Left out of the suite were our own Earth and the not yet discovered Pluto.

In addition to providing narration, I also provided the visuals used as a backdrop for the concert. The visuals consisted of a combination of my own astronomical art and images taken from various NASA web sites.

The concert was a free public event of the Music Institute of Chicago. Billed as a free concert for kids, the program opened with a musical instrument petting zoo which gave children the opportunity to handle a wide variety of musical instruments. As people filled the hall and awaited the start of the concert, a slide show of my martian imagery was displayed on the main screen. Some of the many pieces shown can be seen on my Mars Art Gallery web site.

The concert opened with a piano recital by 5-year-old MIC pianist Emily Bear whose performance was outstanding. Appropriately, her featured piece was Fly Me to the Moon. What was really impressive was that two of the songs she performed were her own compositions. Emily was then replaced on the stage by the 30 piece MIC Orchestra which launched into the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The conclusion of this song was my cue to take the stage.

My first task was to provide narration for the song Blast Off!. For those who love trivia, the musical score for Blast Off! was carried into space aboard the STS-92 Discovery mission to the International Space Station. Narrating Blast Off! was a challenge for two reasons. First, I had to take cues from the conductor Benjamin Loeb for when to speak - a totally new experience for me. Second, I had to “act” the words. Fortunately the previous night’s rehearsals really helped with both. I must say that I found twenty lines of dialog spoken on cue with feeling far more difficult to deliver than a two hour class I taught at the Adler Planetarium.

Following the end of Blast Off!, I gave the audience a brief overview of the planet Jupiter and its Galilean moons and introduced Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity. Another short lecture about Mars and the importance of exploring the red planet led to the introduction of Mars, the Bringer of War - one of my favorite musical pieces. A number of years ago I had the opportunity to see Emerson, Lake, and Powell (not Palmer) perform their version of this piece in concert - a totally killer interpretation that remains one of my most memorable concert experiences.

For me the entire event was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and the MIC people were a real pleasure to work with. It was also a great piece of community service work by the Music Institute of Chicago. Not only were they providing children with the opportunity to handle instruments and attend a concert, attendees also got to learn a little about space exploration and see some space art.

Ad Astra, Jim

Just Another Moon

The NASA Advanced Planning and Partnership Office at Langley Research Center is sponsoring a space art contest for college students. The theme for this art contest is Life and Work on the Moon. NASA is accepting submissions in three categories: two-dimensional, three-dimensional and digital. I find it interesting that the contest organizers have chosen to distinguish between traditional and digital two-dimensional art. I have sent a letter to the contest contact inquiring about the reason for this distinction. I am guessing that the distinction is a result of the file size limitation imposed on original digital art.

The contest opens in October, accepts submissions up to December 1, with the winners announced in either January or February 2008 - with the web site indicating January but the news release indicating February. The winning art will be displayed online and in NASA facilities and museums around the country. The top cash award is listed as $1,000.00 with additional smaller cash prizes for each of the categories.

For contest details visit The Moon: Back to the Future Contest Page.

Ad Astra, Jim