Total Noob Work in Progress suggestions and critique please

[johnfosteruk]

Evening all.

So I have not an artistic bone in my body in terms of pen/pencil/paint etc to paper. I'm a keen photographer and consider myself to have quite a good eye in that respect. I play musical instruments and love a bit of fine woodwork too so I'm clearly not lacking in creative juices, but I just haven't been able to translate what my eye sees to paper in the past. To be fair though, I've never really persevered. The last thing I drew was my 3rd year art project about a thousand years ago.

I've always been of the belief that I can teach myself anything with the right guidance and plenty of practice, and some of the stunning pieces on the forums have captivated me so I decided this evening to give it a go.

I've skimmed through "Astronomical Sketching: A Step by Step Guide" from the Patrick Moore Practical Astronomy series to get some rough guidance and raided the wife's craft supplies for pencils, putty and stumps.

For material, I'm using an image I captured and stacked from video of the eastern limb of the moon about 3 weeks ago. I'm focussing around the Mare Crisium area and surrounding craters, including Langrenous, Cleomedes and Tralles. 

This is nowhere near finished and nowhere near what I'd like to be able to achieve, the geometry is off and there's nowhere near the full amount of detail - plenty of work to do in that area, but I thought I'd ask what everybody thought, in terms of critique of the overall effect, what you would be wanting to capture, and how you would do it - there's plenty of technique advice in the book, but I'd like to hear how others do it.

I'm particularly pleased with the area at the top of the image, Cleomedes and surrounding craters, I think it's got some good dimension but I'd like to capture more.

Excuse the shadows - quick iPhone snaps. Tell me what you think and thanks in advance.

 

 

 

[Starwiz]

Looks good to me!  Nice work.

[Knighty2112]

Very nicely sketched. Well done!  

[StarSapling]

Looks great to me.  My advice (which I need to follow myself):  Sketch, Sketch, Sketch

[mariosi]

Lovely done! 

 

Marios

[laudropb]

Very nice start to your sketching career.

[dweller25]

Thats very good

[bigrich]

Nicely  done, you have captured surface details very well.