To all at Cloudy Nights

I am new to the site. I find the discussion about the term professional artist or photographer interesting- I believe it merely means if you are paid for the work and that you show some mastery and skill in the use of the medium. I just received an email notice of a contest for images but misread it as sketching only, to then arrive at the site and see so much astrophotography- As I do not have that equipment, and although I had two of my astrophoto images published in Astronomy Magazine as full page time exposures in 1994, one awarded, I then recently turned back to my art and submitted pastel sketches of the sun as I observed it through my h-alpha filtered telescope- NASA sites such as Astronomy Picture of the Day and Spaceweather.com began running them in their front pages- I received emails from all over the world to commend me- The same responses from many non-artists; Are you aa professional? How much money do your works demand? etc, etc, etc. I would say, if a good artist could make a living at this, we would never have adopted the phrase 'starving artist'- yet I received some amazing responses on the art- One such, was a lady artist in Sedona who indicates to me that the web is so oversaturated with digital photography that real hand drawn art has a new appeal again. I will try to post some photo images then pastel sketches below (the Hand Drawn Mercury Transit was featured in Astronomy Picture of the Day Nov17th 2006; all others in Spaceweather.com)- Mark >