Added 1 new A* page:Over the weekend I tried out the interesting looking colors in my new little travel watercolor kit, on top of an ink sketch of the character Stella who we met early on in episode 16:
Normally I don't think I'd color anything in such a Christmassy riot of hues, but I wanted to get a look at as many of the colors in the kit as possible, and I have to say I wasn't all that impressed by them. Also I shouldn't have put the yellows in, that's just ick. But I definitely learned a lot about those watercolors, so mission accomplished I suppose. :P It is in the episode 17 gallery, and if you want to have it on your wall to scare the children, you can buy it right here.
I did the thick background stars by dotting on the black ink around them with a dried sea sponge. Here's the ink sketch masked off with a transparent overlay to protect the non-sky parts from the sponging:
Then I hit it with the inked-up sponge:
And here's what it looked like with the mask removed:
And then I assaulted it with the colors. I don't even intend to color things in a modeling-the-three-dimensional-form sort of way, only I kind of forgot that when I was doing this. Alas! Then the colors got muddy in spots because I was sloppy with them, and I needed some white ink highlights to kind of punch things up. So far I'm happier with the cheap gouache kit I used in a couple previous color experiments, but these transparent watercolors *do* cover up less of the black ink they happen to get over, which is a plus.
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A privately owned SpaceX unmanned Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon cargo module just blasted off for the International Space Station, marking "the first-ever cargo delivery trip to the International Space Station by a robotic, American-made spacecraft," and the first private space station cargo mission. A dozen of these SpaceX cargo flights have been scheduled, and with them the U.S. once again--after the cancellation of the Space Shuttle program--has a means of getting supplies to the station, instead of having to sit by the sidelines while the world's other spacefaring nations do all the heavy lifting. And the SpaceX missions can also return a load of cargo back to Earth, splashing down in the ocean, whereas the unmanned cargo missions from other nations don't bring stuff back, and just burn up in the atmosphere.
Apparently one of the Falcon 9's nine engines went out during its climb, but the other eight engines compensated for the loss and got the rocket to its designated orbit, as they're designed to do.
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