Artisthos Reporting for Duty

[artisthos]

I have been a fan of Orbiter since 2003. From time to time I find myself opening Orbiter to advance my knowledge of space travel. Now my daughter went to the Huntsville Astronaut Camp and for the life of me I could not get her interested in the best thing instead of real space travel, Orbiter. My first space simulator was Microsoft's Space. I even have a unopened copy of game as I know it will only go up in value as a collectible. Now, I have advanced to the forum. Since I read the Martian and now have seen the movie, I have a whole new interest in studying space dynamics. Thank you for the best simulator in the universe.

As a working fine artist looking for new adventures to paint, I got press credentials from "Heavy Metal Magazine" and was at the first space shuttle launch. I got press credentials for the Voyage encounters with Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. I was representing Rolling Stone Magazine during the Neptune encounter and got my credential taken because I could not name the editor, I was working for a second, second, second editor. But I did get to learn about the American Interplanetary Society. Finishing the rest of the encounter with the best supporters out there.

I learned that people are not quite ready for space paintings. My most popular were the planets with fictional spacecraft in them like Star Trek and Star Wars.

My next space painting will be to finish the five by five foot painting of Saturn I started placing a young astronaut in the foreground admiring the view from the comfort of her craft.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Welcome to the forums!
We have a thread somewhere featuring space-related artwork. If I can shirk my duties here at work I'll see if I can dig it up. I'm always interested in seeing good stuff (real as well as the fantastic).

Also, the screenshot thread has some really good examples that might be of some use as inspiration.

See you around the forums!

 

[Donamy]

Welcome !!!

Paintings of the International Space Station would be nice.

 

[francisdrake]

Hi, I wonder if you could post some photos of your artwork here?
They can be low-res or watermarked, but just to get an idea how it looks like.

 

[Ripley]

Hi Artisthos, welcome to OF! :thumbup:

 

[Loru]

Welcome to the forum. Please enjoy yourself and ignore frequent fires and explosions.

 

[Geirunni]

Welcome!!!!!!

 

[artisthos]

From my web site:
Space Shuttle Columbia on Launch Pad for its Maiden Flight

Oil on canvas, 24" x 36", April 4th, 1981, Property of Chuck Lohre

Tom was a member of the press for the first space shuttle launch. He got credentials from Heavy Metal Magazine in New York and flew to Titusville, staying with friends for two weeks while he painted the spacecraft. At the time, Tom had hair down to his shoulders and was 28 years old and rough as far as an artist goes. It was rather overwhelming to get credentials to the Space Center but he did and received a ride from someone that worked at the Center everyday during the mission. He stayed with the granddaughter of a friend of a friend in New York City. They were a fantastic couple with several children in the area. Tom enjoyed their company and got to know the children. Some of them even worked on the shuttle in the tile department. The shuttle had some problems in the tiles that covered the nose and leading edge of the spacecraft's wings to protect it from the 2,700 plus degrees Fahrenheit during the reentry. The temperature drops to 600 degrees Fahrenheit on the upper part of the fuselage. During preparation for the first launch, a lot of speculation went into whether the tiles would stick or not. Tom had learned from the tile team that as many as 10 pieces of documentation went with every tile of which there was thousands. The project had been taken over by women because they were better equipped to deal with the detail of keeping track of all the tiles.

This painting was painted under armed guard, 200' from the shuttle in about twenty minutes. The space center had allowed a group of photographers to travel closer and Tom lifted a ride with them. The first shuttle had a painted liquid fuel tank where the subsequent ones did not. The cool misty day shows no shadows on the spacecraft. Later in the studio, he place workmen around the bottom and finished off some of the details he just roughed in at the pad.

Tom decided to go to the first space shuttle launch because he had just come from the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens. He was there for the explosion and just felt that being somewhere where something big was going to happen might make for a good painting. Later Tom found out that it is not necessarily true. Beauty in the painting, he discovered, came more from the soul than from anywhere else and you could just as easily do a great painting of the spacecraft from your imagination as from anywhere else.