'Neighbours' shows, to exact scale, the globes of Earth, Mars and the Moon. On the right-hand hemisphere is their appearance from space, while on the left is a 'typical scene' on each planet.

Of the three, Earth was the most difficult to deal with: what is a typical scene on Earth -- an Arctic waste? A Saharan desert scene? An idyllic English countryside? I settled for a fairly generic mountain scene (which could be in Austria, Switzerland, the Rockies or many other locations) because I needed it to blend into the landscapes of the other two worlds.

At another scale of magnitude, our own Milky Way and its neighbour galaxy, M31 in Andromeda, are also shown.

This painting was produced originally for Erik Viktor's marvellous Space World travelling exhibition, which attempts to show the importance of space conquest for the future of mankind through a mix of art, technology and visions of the future, and which visited the UK in 2000. It measures 36 x 36in., in acrylics on canvas, and was sold to a lady in Mexico City, following its appearance in Astronomy magazine (April 1999). However, a (smaller) print has now been produced by Dreamstone in Australia and is now available from AstroArt too.. Please do e-mail me if interested in any of the other works shown on this website.

This is a purely digital rendering of the Discovery, entering Saturn's rings as described in 2001: ASpace Odyssey ­ the novel version. In the movie, of course, we go to Jupiter in a very different Discovery.

Lens Flare - was I the first?
This sort of lens-flare effect is very common today (almost ubiquitous) on computer images, but I airbrushed it in 1970 to add to the photographic quality of an image, and a feeling of brightness, as in the example from New Challenge of the Stars. Was I the first? If you know different, please let me know!