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I hope you are too...

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Yes, I am! Beautiful sketch

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@Puck Ja: Have you already tried with a UHC or OIII filter? Because then the nebula should really leap out at you.

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There's something about the way Peter does his work that makes the image hugely realistic. Perhaps it't the subtle haloes on the stars, or the fact the background is not too black? Whatever the magic is he does, it's just like looking down the barrel of an eyepiece for sure.

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Wow! What a wonderful comment! Thank you so much...

Well, let me share some of my little secrets with you. Obviously my backgrounds are never black but different shades of grey depending on magnification and/or filter use. I also take a picture of my original drawing because this way you get a much livelier background. The background of a scanned image is much more "sterile" and "flat", whereas in reality the shades of the background are never truly uniform, at least as far as my personal experience is concerned.

Secondly, as you also noticed, I put faint haloes around the brighter stars to make them look more "alive". With really bright stars I also draw the diffraction spikes.

But here's a little secret you may not have noticed yet. I never use plain white for the stars, but a light sort of grey. White is to my opinion too "flashy". There's also another way to draw fainter stars other than just drawing smaller dots: using darker colour. I found out that faint stars, even when drawn with just a 1px brush, are too "sharp" and bright when drawn with the same light-grey colour like the brighter stars. Now I even use very dark grey hues and I'm particularly fond of the result.

@Jef and Mike: also many thanks to you!

Peter

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Stunningly realistic presentation.When will the book come out? Your drawings are a real treasure!

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Hehehe... When an editor is willing to publish it!

Thanks a lot, guys!!!

Peter

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