This is my latest drawing. I'm afraid it's a photo so it's come out slightly fuzzy

The background is in graphite dust, though I did apply a bit of compressed charcoal to it too, while the brown dwarf its self is done in pastels with a bit of graphite squiggled over the top.

I've never actually painted before so I have no idea how you do this. What an incredible star field! You've got cluster, dust, empty space and a wonderful variation of sizes. Maybe a starfield on canvas is easier than I think or maybe it's difficult and you're just really awesome! I don't know, but I do know that I really like it.

The asteroids are a nice touch and I also like the texture on the planet. I'm just trying to figure out why it's partly red. I'm sure there is a good reason but my vast knowledge of astronomy doesn't include that answer! That last bit was sarcasm if you didn't notice!

Great work.

Wow this is really cool!! I thought the first one was good, but IMO this is above and beyond the first  I've used graphite/charcoal/pastels before, but I've never achieved this amount of control (mine usually looks like a monkey's fingerpainting!) I would't have thought it was possible really....I wonder if i can find my charcoal set  I want to try this

Its fantastic seeing how much the SV community
jumps on a new medium like this! I again have
nothing but praise, being not able to draw anything
at all on paper...

The starfield tops most digital starfields, and again
the composition is just really, really well-done. In my
opinion, the structure of the brown dwarf in this piece
is much more recognizable than the previous piece,
and the detail is very impressive. It's hard to give
detail suggestions since we can't see the real thing,
but for simple graphite and pastels the composition is
really well done.

Have you ever considered exploring nebulas or other
colorful background effects? It might spice up the
entire picture a bit - though I know this is supposed
to be a graphite study.

Augustus - I really want to do some nebulae pics. At the moment though I've got to concentrat on the brown dwarfs as all these pieces are going towards my negotiated project for uni. I'm planning to sneak the odd nebulae in to the background though 

Regulus - it's just practise and patience and lots of mess, but that's part of the fun.

JKelly - it's a brown dwarf, a young comparitvely warm one, so it's probably experiencing some deuterium fusion at the moment. This will soon peter out and the dwarf will gradually cool down and become much darker.

Sophia, this is wonderful work.--just wondering what field of study you are working on (You have a pretty good understanding of astronomy and physics).  Jan

Just an update (you probably know it already):  Newly discovered brown dwarf.  well actually it's green, coldest one so far, extremely smelly and lumpy, very lumply and a sorry excuse for a , well anything.  Its composition is methane, hydrogen, sulfide, and ammonia and if you could pick up a bottle of it, it would smell very, very bad. 

I'm doing a degree in illustration. I've already got a general BSc with the Open University. I've been facinated with astronomy since I saw a lunar eclipse at the age of 6.

I saw about that really cold, stinky brown dwarf over at here :-

http://http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/green-brown-dwa rf-star-spotted-101110.html

From the information in the article it would be really dark with just the old glowing spot or streak as gas wells up from deeper inside. Would make a nice painting

Note that the BD mentioned in the article is "green" because of how astronomers have made a colour image out of the infrared data - it wouldn't actually look green to the human eye (it'd probably look more like a deep magenta).