Standard palette for planetary sketching?

[RikM]

I paint a bit with watercolours and oils, landscapes mainly, and I have a standard palette of colours for this:

Yellow Ochre

Cadmium yellow pale

Cadmium red

Alizarin crimson

French ultramarine

Windsor blue (red shade)

Hooker's green (dark)

Payne's grey

Do any of you planetary sketchers have a standard palette for Mars, Saturn and Jupiter?

I would like to have a go at planetary sketching so I need some pencils for this.

[dweller25]

I am no artist but do a bit of planetary drawing - I just use coloured pencils.

I would suggest you give it a go and develop your own style, good luck ......

[astroeddie]

I do a lot of planetary sketching. TBH the subtle colour variations, for accuracy, would only be achieved in water colour. I just go grey scale.

Eddie

[SallyR]

I have dabbled at sketching Mars (and Jupiter to a lesser extent) for a number of years, and have found that what works best for me is to do a graphite sketch at the eyepiece, then to make a colour sketch from the monochrome version as soon as possible afterwards (before I forget what the colours were!) I use a range of coloured pencils and build up 'mixed' colours on the sketch itself by adding very light layers of individual colours with a gentle scribbling motion. Here are a couple of drawings to show the results. I used standard colour pencils from a range of manufacturers - they were just pencils that I'd had kicking around for years! I use a deep red (like Alizarin crimson), a light brown (similar to raw sienna), a pure purple (violet?), pale blue (somewhat like a Cerulean blue), a deeper blue (Ultramarine), orange (similar to Cadmium orange), and a deep green (I haven't a name for this one as I tend to mix my greens when using watercolour). Sketch dates/times are:

2008_01_16, 19:30-20:05 UT

2008_01_16, 22:15-22:40 UT

Both sketches have been electronically flipped to correct orientation.

Hope this helps.

All the best,

[RikM]

Thanks for that Sally, that's exactly what I was hoping. Raw sienna is good background colour and I think closer than the yellow ochre I normally use.