My First Drawing of Jupiter - as bad as it is!!

[Jim Franklin]

OK - I am no artist, drawing has never been my forte, but the other night when getting the scopes sorted, I thought I would try my hand at Jupiter as I had not set up one of my ZWO cameras. This is not great, it was done on my knee, in the dark with an HB pencil with Jupiter magnified to around 166x. The smudges around it are stars, the brighters ones, the Galilean Moons were clearly visible, spread out, two on each side of the Big J like diamonds, but this image does not include them. 

I have ordered some oil pencils to try to do this in colour so it has more detail, and hhopefully, when I am doing this again I will have the hemisphere with the GRS visible. I am going to rig up a red light and use my camping table to give a flat surface for the paper, I may go A3 for detail. As I said, I am no artist and I know this is fairly poor quality - I do not expect to be able to match the amazing images other are able to produce - but that is why I have cameras 😁

[SwiMatt]

I think this is great! And it seems like you wanna go big with sketching I look forward to seeing more of your work!

I think that the goal of sketching can be two-fold: to give a better impression of what you actually see in the eyepiece (a difficult feat with any picture), or to collect an experience, how you saw it and how you felt about it. So, the "quality" of the sketch is not always the point.

[Jim Franklin]

3 minutes ago, SwiMatt said:

I think this is great! And it seems like you wanna go big with sketching I look forward to seeing more of your work!

I think that the goal of sketching can be two-fold: to give a better impression of what you actually see in the eyepiece (a difficult feat with any picture), or to collect an experience, how you saw it and how you felt about it. So, the "quality" of the sketch is not always the point.

I have always been tempted to draw, I love seeing the sketches done by astronomers years before cameras were used for astroimaging. I am finding that as my eyes change as I get older, what I see through the camera doesn't always end up in a clear image in the camera..but I can get focus for my eyes so I went down the sketch route, actually, I found it very cathartic and calming, I drew Jupiter as my eyes actually saw it in that 15 minute window, so it is more personal than an electronic image. Hopefully clear skies tonight for another go. 

[dweller25]

Actually Jim that is quite good, Jupiter is a long way from us at the moment so not showing much detail.

If you keep practicing over the next few months Jupiter will reward you with much more detail.

Mars too 👍

I like to draw too and find binoviewers really help - they allow a more relaxed view and two eyes see the details more easily.

Edited August 31 by dweller25

[Jim Franklin]

2 minutes ago, dweller25 said:

Actually Jim that is quite good, Jupiter is a long way from us at the moment so not showing much detail.

If you keep practicing over the next few months Jupiter will reward you with much more detail.

Mars too 👍

I like to draw too and find binoviewers really help - they allow a more relaxed view and two eyes see the details more easily.

Thanks, appreciate that. I have a story about binoveiwers but for another post. 

[mariosi]

Hello Jim,

Very nice observation and sketch. 

You have captured the details very well! I can recognize the GRS and belts. There is no good or bad sketches. Skethes and drawings from all over the world and that is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!!