Art Tip #2

"Craters are actually fun to paint. You have to keep in mind your light, where it's falling and sometimes how deep the crater is (they are all different) and, as I carry the cratering back from the light side of the planet/moon, I keep in mind only the receding rim will show as I move back, to the point of total darkness,beyond the terminator, where I will put in little ticks and bits of light, then darkness. Often, only that receding edge will show because the crater can be an "innie" with very little sticking above ground, and as such, you don't get the nearer-to-the-light side showing at all. Some "outties" have puckered up so that both sides will be illuminated. Some craters are deep,deep bowls and others have filled up with lava and flattened out on the bottoms. It's all up to you, particularly if you are painting a world no one has so far mapped in depth, which I prefer to do. My thinking is, there are so many photos and CGI of "the moon", why bother painting that? Hey, even Alan Bean paints his craters impressionistically and you'd still never doubt it was the Moon!!! I try for a random effect, not at all deliberate, because, it's all a series of happy accidents anyhow when they were formed by natural forces in the first place. I break up the monotony of circles and put craters WITHIN craters, some smashed into the rims of others. You can have all kinds of fun all day long doing that."

100 Mile Scarp by Walt Myers

One feature that distinguishes Mercury from the other planets are the enormous scarps, or cliffs, that stretch for hundreds of miles across its coppery surface. They are believed to have been caused by massive blocks of Mercury's crust being thrust upward, probably while the planet was cooling and shrinking early in its development. The scarp pictured here is about two miles high (twice as high as the walls of Earth's Grand Canyon) and runs for about a hundred miles.

Copyright © 2001
International Association of Astronomical Artists