Visions of the Cosmos from the Mind of an Artist

I’ve written about space art before, about how much I like the genre and how inspiring it is. Part of this is because I am smitten with gorgeous actual images of stars, planets and galaxies, and I love to see how artists depict them. I also like space art because it (like astronomy) takes us to places we’ll likely never visit on our own.  I went stooging around the Web today looking for good space art. Here are some lovely places and pieces I found — and I encourage you to visit the associated Web sites for more info.

The granddaddy of space artists was Chesley Bonestell. Over at Bonestell Space Art, you can follow his career through his art.  Check it out!

Another artist whose work I’ve been supporting with a modest yearly membership to his website is Ryan Bliss at Digital Blasphemy.  I’m continually amazed at his work and you’ll love it, too!

He releases new images pretty regularly, and makes them available in a variety of sizes for desktop use.

Ryan also links to a user gallery that features stunning views of the cosmos by artists such as Markus Gann (3dSceneries.com), as well as work from another space artist who goes by the name Kerem and his work adorns album covers (among other things.)

Jeff Quick is another artist whose work I enjoy. He displays his images and music under the name Moodflow. The site is gorgeous and a couple of his publicly available pieces show up on my desktop from time to time. He uses various programs to create his ‘scapes.

Jeff’s landscape of a planet at Alpha Orionis evokes a sort of quiet awe in the viewer at the same as it takes you to a place around a star that we see only from our vantage point around 500 light-years away. Whether or not there actually ARE such planets around that star is somewhat immaterial. The point is, the artwork TAKES you there! What you do after you get there is up to you and your imagination!

When I look at imagery like this it takes me back to the earliest days when I began to appreciate astronomy and the worlds beyond our planet. I used to imagine what it would be like to float among the rings of Saturn or take a ship to another planet around another star.

Inga Nielsen creates otherworldly views at her web page called Gate to Nowhere. Some are astronomy-oriented while others are more phantasmagorical.

I especially like her Cold Fire scene, with what appears to be an active star seen from the surface of a nearby frozen world. Maybe this is what the end of the Sun’s life will look like from the vantage point of a distant planet some 5 billion years from now.

For those folks who would like to emulate her work, Inga gives tutorials (albeit in German) on how to create the scenes she presents.

There are many, many good space artists showing their wares on the Web these days. Simply go to Google and type in the words “space art” and marvel at the scenes and worlds they take you to!

Happy art-gazing!