Telescope Reviews: How do you get that great digitization of stars?

To all and especially Wade and Chris

I want to thank Wade for posting this info about digital tutorials as it appears that Roland and I and perhaps others may have misunderstood Chris' questions about digitizing to achieve an artistic and creative effect of a halo appearance around stars.

I was completely unaware that there are programs which have a preliminary star field in the screen to accurately portray the star positions, if that is what I am seeing in these tutorials. I had the impression that all astro artists were working entirely from a blank slate, whether that be a canvas, pastel paper, Photoshop blank screen, etc. I had thought that everyone who produces astro artwork, worked entirely from a blank slate.

I know there are controversial arguments from some who claim that Photoshop and other computer programs are not true classic art mediums as I saw a statement from one such member recently that he refuses to post his hand drawn artwork in the same forum among “Gimped and Photoshopped” works. I still do not know what the term “Gimped” means.

Furthermore I want to apologize to Chris as I did not mean to imply that others should not execute artwork using any digital technology. That of course is a personal choice of all who engage in any creative process. Although I know several have commented here at times that they do not believe that Photoshop art and hand drawn pastels, paintings an/or other classic mediums should be combined in the same forum.

I would hope that Chris at least tries to experiment a little with just old fashioned sketching to paper at first.

As Roland, Frank an myself usually do with pastels, and I am sure I am speaking for many others aside from us old timers, I believe that the old school methods and allowing a new student of artwork and sketching should at least enjoy a little of the classic artistic process for starters. Thre are simply many untold pocesses taing place when one touches the chalk to the paper, that will benfit your artistic enjoyment, that cannot be reproduced with a mouse clicking to a sterile computer screen of filtered matrix dots.

I know many people say that they cannot draw or that their drawings look childlike or they are simply disappointed with their work at first. I would invite them to ask any master artist what that artist thought of their own first attempts to sketch and draw. We all began with a crawl-draw before we could fetch a great sketch.

All artists have heard it many times from our non-artist friends; “God! If I could draw like you, I would quite my office job and make a million as an artist riht now! Little do they know the long years of humiliating and patience building process that is part of the development to the stepping stones of great achievement in art. Herein lies this great artistic process. From your first works, and I recommend that you start with real hardcopy paper and old world mediums like graphite and pastel chalks because you will immediately produce a permanent hard copy archival work, that can be looked back on to review in your portfolio at any time for years to come.

This does not always happen with electronically and digitally produced works. Many digital artists will only save their digital works in electronic memory when they find that it is completed on the screen or worse, accidentally delete several hours of work with no hard copy remaining. Believe me, it happens in our new world of convenient technologies. These problems even span to the professional world. I had an MRI image taken of my shoulder injury last week- They saved it to the latest technology- A CD but not the old world large negative film sheet. I waited a week for my appointment to review the image with my doctor. When I got to the office she says, we cannot look at your image today Mark as our computers are malfunctioning and awaiting repair next week. Had the radiologist made an old world film negative, even with a power failure, we could have merely held the film sheet image up to a daylight window, or for that matter a candle light and the important information could have been seen immediately. It could be life saving or life threatening at that moment. But chalk it up to a computer failure again. Like the HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, they cannot be trusted due to human error in the computer.

This old world process of sketching as many still do is so gratifying, and I am sure as a new art student, you will read many other sources to confirm this. Read no further than when my first abstract surreal pastel sketches of a solar prominence that I observed through my solar h-alpha telescope appeared in NASA’s Spaceweather.com front page for three days on October 14 ~ 16, 2006 (see their back dated archives) as I received email from around the world. I had no expectations that many people would write to me commending that they were so glad to see “real hand drawn art” for a change in the web, instead of another digital photograph or simulated computer image that seems to over-saturate the web these days.

I look forward to your first work with great enthusiasm Chris! Whatever you do ill be appreciated by all, but it is you that will be the most gratified in what you accomplish with your continued efforts.

Best of luck!

Mark