Mars Opposition Watercolou​r

Mars Opposition-April 15, 2014
Mars Opposition-April 15, 2014

•Object Name (Mars)
•Object Type (Planet)
•Location (Artignosc sur Verdon – France)
•Date (April 15th)
•Media (Watercolour on white paper, digital tools Paint.Net for the text)

I use my 4” refractor (achromatic) f/10 – 200x to make the initial sketch; sadly the 12” Dobson give me less contrast for this target. Although the full Moon was very bright, (maybe more bright because of the clear sky of my new small village of Artignosc), details on Mars were easy to watch.

After making the first sketch, some locals came in my backyard to have a look, I like that, and sharing beauty is so easy to do.

For this image I use watercolour, on a very humid 300gr paper, I let the pigment floating as I saw the planet colours. The water helps me to give a natural look and feel. Of course this image has no any scientific value; this is just to keep a souvenir of this Mars close passage. Don’t try to compare the little details of my watercolour with reality; I let that to my astrophotography friends, they are so good today!

More info (in French sorry) on http://astro.aquarellia.com

Friendly yours

Michel Deconinck

6 thoughts on “Mars Opposition Watercolou​r”

  1. Michel,

    Beautiful capture of Mars with that very fine refractor telescope.
    All the better for being a water color rendition.
    Excellent!

    Frank 🙂

  2. Michel,

    I very much enjoyed the details and technique of your watercolor presentation of Mars. Thank you for sharing it.

    Cindy (Thia)

  3. 4″ or 40″ ? 😉
    Incredible to have such a good seeing with only x200 magnification!
    It must be a good tube, or you have got eagle eyes… 🙂
    Really nice!

Leave a Reply