Moon 13 Feb 2019

[Ruud]

This was fun to make. It’s a computer painting, made with a Wacom drawing tablet, Photoshop and Corel Painter essentials. As a starting point I used a computer generated image of the Moon for 13 Feb 2019 at 22:00 UT from https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4442.

In Photoshop, the original was cropped and enlarged till it was big and blurry. It was then sharpened, posterized and greatly enhanced in contrast. The oil paint filter was applied.
The result served as an underpainting which was elaborated in Painter, mostly with a sharp bristled smeary brush. I softened the result by pushing the paint around with a soft camel hair brush.
Back in Photoshop, I reduced the image in size and applied a black mask, a burlap texture and some annotation to get this final result.

Only the larger details you see here are real. All texture comes from the brushes in Painter and the filters in Photoshop.

I hope you like it.

[barkis]

You embarked on an intricate process on this Ruud, but you've produced a fantastic result.  A splendid image, almost a photo likeness.

Well done.?

Ron.

[Astro Imp]

Like it, I love it. 
Thanks for posting a great image Ruud.

[mariosi]

Brilliant image. Beautifully done !

[Ruud]

Thanks guys. I started making these out of observation deprivation due to clouds. It is good therapy.

Here are two more:

These too are based on https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/4442 and painted with Corel Painter and Photoshop

[Astro Imp]

Beautifully presented Ruud, a joy to see.

[mariosi]

Beautiful,beautiful images Ruud.

[Lurcher]

Absolutely. Excellent images Ruud. I like the font on the latest one which matches with the flow of the paintbrush effect well, but the first of the new set really jumps out of the dark background at you.

 

[Pete Presland]

A really cool effect,  not seen that before, thank you for sharing.

[Wiu-Wiu]

Very nicely done and what a coincidence! I was looking into ways to digitalise my sketching, and the wacom sketching tablets came up. I only think they were rather expensive (price of a new iPad), so getting one without proper reason is a bit crazy. 

How are your findings in sketching with it? And would it work at the eyepiece? 

(I was mainly looking into the 'digitalising' part (i.e. drawing on paper and then redoing the sketch on the tablet)

[Ruud]

8 hours ago, Wiu-Wiu said:

Very nicely done and what a coincidence! I was looking into ways to digitalise my sketching, and the wacom sketching tablets came up. I only think they were rather expensive (price of a new iPad), so getting one without proper reason is a bit crazy. 

How are your findings in sketching with it? And would it work at the eyepiece? 

(I was mainly looking into the 'digitalising' part (i.e. drawing on paper and then redoing the sketch on the tablet)

Thanks

My tablet is the Wacom Intuos Art Pen and Touch Tablet, Medium. I got it new for €158 some three years back. The Art in the name comes from the included software: Corel Painter essentials. That has many pens, pencils, brushes etcetera.

With Corel Painter you can do fully automatic paintings: just load an image, select a style and hit the start button, but the results are never satisfactory. The option 'oil painting' looks best though.
I use it manually. The manual paint brushes of the photo paint section just pick up colours from an underlying image and applies them to the painting. It is as if an automatic colour picker is at work. The paint is either from the underlying image alone or from a blend of the underlying image and previous strokes. For the results above I mostly used brushes with rather stiff bristles combined with a soft camel hair brush.

It's a pleasure to use the tablet. I originally got it because my right index finger started to hurt from using the mouse. The pen feels very natural. The tablet is for just-pen or for pen-and-touch. It really is versatile. It has an excellent interface with which you can set its buttons and behaviour per program. It took a while before I found out how Windows ink differs from Wacom's and which to use for which program.  I hardly use my mouse these days.

I quickly wore out the nibs for the pen. They cost about a Euro each, but with a bit of practice you can make your own nibs from grass trimmer line.

I can't image using the tablet at the eyepiece. You need to see what you are doing and switching between a computer screen and the eyepiece would ruin your dark adaptation. Working from a scanned sketch would be much better.

There are less expensive tablets around. On YouTube, Borodante reviews several, for instance the Gaomon m106k (see both his videos about that tablet here). I don't regret getting the Wacom though. The quality is high and especially with the Windows feature updates of Win10 you need the manufacturer to release driver updates for many years to come. (The 1809 feature update messed up lots of drivers on my computer!)

Some apps for which a pen and tablet make a world of difference are Corel Painter, Verve Painer*, Krita*, Photoshop, Darktable*, Gimp* and Inkscape*. (The ones with an asterisk are free.)

 

[des anderson]

All masterpieces, well done . Des