IFAS Sketching Competition - June 2009 - Star Clusters

To vote for the entry which you believe deserves to be the winner of the IFAS Sketching Competition June 2009, please send a pm to me with "Entry 1" or "Entry 2" and I will count up the votes.

Closing date for votes is the 29th of July.

Best of luck to the competitors!

Thanks,

Michael.

Entry No 1:



M3, globular cluster in Canes Venatici, as viewed through a 16" Mak-Cass at 150X.
HB and 4H pencil on white cartridge paper, scanned and inverted in Photoshop.


Entry No. 2:



Sketch of M25 taken almost two years ago in pencil
Sketch scanned it into Photoshop to get the "fuzzy" star effect and inverted to give the black background.

don't forget to get your votes in folks!

Michael.

And thr winner of the IFAS Sketching Competition for June 2009 is...Jeff Young!

Well done Jeff!

Michael.

Congrats Jeff, richly deserved.

Paul

Well done Jeff.

Out of curiosity, how do you get the globular looking so realistic? Do you use some kind of shading technique? Whatever it is, its a very real looking representation.

Dave

Thanks, guys.

Dave, I first plot about 100 stars with an HB pencil just like I was sketching an open cluster. These will be the field stars and the brightest stars within the globular. Then I do a bit with a blending stump to add in the milky background (assuming there is one -- some globs appear to resolve fully but they'd be the minority). Lastly I draw random dots by twirling a 3H pencil vertically. These are placed to replicate the "visual density" of the cluster.

I have recently discovered that paper matters. I used a different sketchbook in Colorado, and it was much harder to get smooth blending with the blending stump using it. I think it will affect my nebulae more than globulars, but I haven't scanned them in yet. (Perhaps this will give me the incentive to make some progress there.)

Cheers,
-- Jeff.