When I draw nebulae, I never sketch or plan beyond the most whimsical of lines. I prefer not to define them if I can at all avoid it, instead preferring to let them evolve as I work. No one technique for creating them has ever gained my fancy, and no one type of nebula has ever reigned supreme as “THE nebula for the serious space artist” (a silly consideration to begin with, why limit yourself?). In my experience, they grow based on playing and deciding for one’s self what works for the given composition, truly a gut creation if I ever saw one. And they take time. This is a subject that looks like it would be fairly easy to create, but oddly enough isn’t. If it was, everyone would be doing it and succeeding brilliantly (which isn’t saying that some people aren’t succeeding brilliantly, there are many out there with “the knack” for nebulae). Simply put, if there was a quick and easy way to make incredible nebulae, we’d see a lot more of them. But there’s more to a nebula than the techniques of its creation. Like I say about everything, they should tell a story, because in real life each and every one does just that. Take, for example, planetary nebulae. Most often composed of dust and the raw materials for life, these variants of reflection nebulae organize around a star or a system of stars. The story of the beginning of a solar system is there for the taking (or illustrating), and is far more interesting than a simple splash and smear affair that is concerned solely with “looking like space.” The human race has long looked at the stars and been in awe, but history maintains that we didn’t peer into the night sky for a good show so much as to derive meaning. To look at space any other way is merely skimming the top of a rich subject with the potential to give so much more. |
