Mixed Media
Piecing it all together

Exploring Space uses multiple mediums to achieve a final product.  For this reason, there is no single "original" per se.  Each stage of the process produces individual pieces which are brought together in a final digital format.

Reference photographs - Web searches yielded source material which I downloaded and resized for my initial design process (see website link citations in my book Space Explorers).

Light Board - As I wanted accurate representations of actual objects, I used a Light Board for tracing and sketching of each component.  

Digital Scan - I used a Scanning App on my phone to make digital scans of my sketches, and then I printed my sketches onto 60# cardstock paper.

Alcohol Ink Markers  - I colored in the images by using alcohol ink markers over the sketch printouts.  This allowed me to keep the black outlines created from the original sketches.  The markers blended easily on the cardstock paper.  

Digital Background - For consistency between scenes, I used a background of stars that I selected from Adobe Stock Photos.  I resized and changed positions of the background on each design to add variation. 

Final Assembly - Once I had the pieces for each of the scenes, I created the final compositions in Adobe Photoshop.

Planets were created using a Cricut machine to cut the circles out of white vinyl.  The surface of the vinyl is similar to alcohol ink paper so that the spreading effects when applying the inks worked the same.