My on-going interest: comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which has hosted a robotic probe on 12 November 2014 for the 1st time in the human history . I have decided to re-create similar water to the one found on 67P and paint with this water a set of works of the comet (read blog post: 67P: generating water for painting).
often make small sketches before starting a large painting. It helps me to make a plan in my mind of how will I work on a main painting, which will take a few weeks to create usually, so I need to make sure that it is going to the right direction from the start.
My sketches are usually made with watercolor on white paper, but since my subject is mainly dark, with a few brighter points, this time I chose black paper and charcoal instead.
I have a board of references, photographs that are mainly taken by the robotic probe itself. My focus is the water found on the comet. I pay close attention to the vapor streaming from the rock when the comet it gets close to the Sun. Water turns immediately from ice to gas then, creating a long tail. I am trying to capture this effect in my work.