8 Planet Drawing

[Rynn Bronaugh]

Weare a global art, environmental education and conservation charity with drawing, one of the oldest forms of communication, at its core. Founded by artist Jane Lee McCracken, to share her passions for drawing and wildlife, we partner with international wildlife charity Born Free, conservationists, artists, educators and cultural institutions. Through our art, education, exhibition and conservation fundraising projects we give children, communities and wildlife a voice.

Our projects give the gift of art and nature to urban and rural communities across the planet. Through our workshops children learn about and connect with nature and the wildlife they draw, and through the exhibitions Jane curates, children have the exciting opportunity to see their drawings displayed in public spaces. We believe education is a key component to reversing the biodiversity crisis and through art, we nurture compassion towards wildlife, and empower children and communities to take collective responsibility for Earth's precious ecosystems. If we care, we want to conserve.

Join Drawing for the Planet and support our art and environmental education projects. Your membership provides art equipment to schools located around the world. Children learn through our workshops to love and respect wildlife, as well as understand the threats many species are facing and how we can help conserve them. Your membership also contributes, through our donations, to the vital work of conservation organisations protecting vulnerable species, like the African buffalo in Edward's drawing below. Membership plans start from as little as the cost of a pack of ballpoint pens, and provide children with the invaluable give of drawing.

Jane Lee McCracken constructs intricate multi-layered Biro (ballpoint pen) drawings, sculptures, installations and designs products. Her art practice explores loss of both humans and animals generated by human destruction and represents the beauty and brutal reality of life. Over the last decade, through her art she has raised funds for conservation organisations and delivered drawing and environmental education workshops to thousands of people across the world. In 2019 she founded Where Did All the Animals Go? project in partnership with Born Free and in 2021 founded Drawing for the Planet. Explore Jane's art:

Since 2019 thousands of drawings of wildlife have been created by children across the world for Jane's Where Did All the Animals Go? exhibitions, learning in her workshops that "everyone can draw". Through the beauty of child art, these drawings celebrate animals as individual beings that live their own lives according to their needs, contemplating what their eyes have seen, and often representing a species facing extinction.

Born Free are thrilled to be partnered with the Where Did All The Animals Go? project. It is so exciting to have seen how engaged children across the globe have been, drawing and learning about both iconic animals, and lesser known endangered species. On every continent wildlife is coming under increasing pressure from habitat destruction, unsustainable exploitation of resources and human-wildlife conflict. This project inspires children to care for all our wild neighbours and understand their importance within the natural landscape, from the African lion to the giraffe weevil.

This tutorial should step you through making a simple, yet realistic-looking planet using Adobe Photoshop 7, and ONLY Adobe Photoshop 7. We're working small here, so keep in mind that the larger you work, the harder the planet will be to create (just a bit more work as size increases).

To complete this tutorial and match what I'm showing you in the sample images, you'll need this image for a texture, so save it in a safe spot, we'll get to it in a moment.

A thank you to Kyle Nervik of Bougal.com, who helped me figure out how to best relate my methods to a general audience by being my development guinea pig (sitting on AIM for over an hour, listening to me argue with myself, and offering suggestions). Thanks, Kyle!

Start brushing color (we'll use hexadecimal value 664029) from about 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock, working towards the upper left corner. You want the result to look like the image to the left of this text. Basically, we've just established the main "sphere" of our planet.

This done, grab your trusty brush tool again (same exact settings as before, and go up to the brushes tab at the top of your screen in Adobe PS. You need to set the texture of your brush to the planet texture for the next step. The window for the brush settings looks like so...

Repeat the brush motions that we used to define our basic sphere, only this time we're adiding texture to the planet. Again, brush from 8 to 2 o'clock only, leave the dark area dark, as it's the shadow on our planet. The result should look like so...

Duplicate your planet layer, and then go to Layer > Layer Style > Blending Options. You can also get to the resulting window via right-clicking on the layer in the layer palette and selecting Blending Options.

Add an inner glow as shown... again, we'll use hexadecimal color value of 6283A7 for the glow color, because the two glows need to match, or they'll look really silly where they meet at the planet outline. Your planet should look something like this now. Not too shabby, but we've got way too much atmosphere on our planet.

Create a new layer on top of your second planet layer. Link this layer to the top planet layer (the one with all the effects), and then merge the two together. This will make your effects just a layer instead of actual effects... so you'll now have a layer with just your blue ring of atmosphere in it. Youll need to set the layer mode of the atmosphere layer to Linear Dodge again to make it match the image once more. This is now our "atmosphere" layer. Again, it is a good idea to rename it as such so you know what you've got.

Let's be nitpicky and add a tiny bit of embossing to the planet to really make it pop. Right now you should still have three layers total... atmosphere on top of planet on top of black background. Duplicate the planet layer.

Use levels on the topmost one to isolate the lights by increasing the darkness until the main part of the layer is black with just a few white squiggles. This is now our "highlights" layer. You might want to rename it as such.

Repeat this with the lower embossed layer, only this time pull the lightness up so you've got all white with black squiggles. This is now our "shadows" layer. Again, it might be a good idea to rename it as such.

Change the black embossed layer mode to Linear Dodge, and the white embossed layer mode to Multiply. You'll notice a strong white outline in the shadow of our planet... use your big fuzzy eraser brush to erase it like you did the extra atmosphere we had earlier.

At this point, you're just about done. Our embossing is a little blatant, however. Planetary details need to be subtle to work with the right sense of scale, so make our "highlights" layer about 50% opaque. The "shadows" layer should be good at about 70% opacity.

Distances in the solar system can be huge! The distance from the Sun to Neptune is nearly three billion miles (four billion kilometers). Because the distances between planets are so great, astronomers sometimes describe distances in terms of astronomical units (AU). One AU is equal to the average distance between the Sun and Earth, about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers). This allows scientists to describe and calculate distances more efficiently. For example, instead of saying, "Mars is 130 million miles from the Sun," scientists can say, "Mars is 1.5 AU from the Sun."

It's not just the distances between planets that are large. There are also huge differences in the size of each planet. Because of this, it can be difficult or even impossible to display both planet size and distance accurately, especially in smaller scale models like an image.

Watch this video about the size of planets and the distances between them to see how far they are from each other, how they differ in size, and how difficult it is to display both their size and distance accurately.

Keep your choice in mind as you calculate the size of planets and distances between them in the next steps. You'll need to have enough materials, and your model will have to fit within the place you choose.

Once you've done your calculations, go to Steps 8-10 for a few different ideas for creating and displaying your model. You can also come up with your own creative display using your choice of materials.

If you are interested in a more accurate way to represent the solar system and have a lot of space (at least half a mile!) to work with, try making a model of the solar system that displays distance and planet size at the same scale. Otherwise, skip this step.

Now it's time to create your model! There are lots of ways you can create and display your scale solar system. With your measurements calculated, choose one of the options below, or come up with your own.

Daborn uses her art as a socially transformative tool to generate positive change by capturing the attention of the public via 13 large-scale charcoal-on-canvas murals. Each artwork opens a discussion about a series of critical issues facing the planet and our respective roles as participants in creating change. Issues like the culture of consumerism and waste, the food crisis, endangered species, and climate change are presented via scenes of ambiguous characters that blur race, culture, and borders.

The exhibition will be on view through Friday, Aug 16. It is sponsored by the Arkansas Humanities Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, Pine Bluff Advertising & Promotion Commission and the Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas Endowment Fund.

I will mostly write about drawing Mars here, as it is easier to draw than some other planets. You will need a printed blank, perhaps already blacked round, or just a circle 5 cm in diameter drawn on the page. A blank or report form can be downloaded from the Mars Section website. If you are drawing a circle on paper, try to use a medium weight drawing paper. Not too much texture, but also not too thin. White card can be used but must be high quality, and certainly not the shiny sort. Figure 2 is a Mars blank.

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