As with the others in the series, this is a combination of a portrait and a landscape. The image is an attempt to document the critical moments just prior to the first manned landing on the surface of the moon. Neil was the commander of the Apollo 11 mission. He was flying the Lunar Module (called the Eagle) along with LM pilot Buzz Aldrin. In the Command Module (called Columbia), astronaut Mike Collins remained in lunar orbit during the landing. So I must first state that Neil was absolutely a part of an amazing team that made the landing possible. There were countless other members of this team back on Earth in Mission Control and all the various other NASA centers and contractors that supported the mission and ultimately lead to the success of Apollo. So I am calling out Neil in the painting because I wanted to document the legacy associated with Ohio.
Across all three paintings I use the curvature of either the Earth or the Moon's surface to spotlight the fact that these aviators revealed new horizons and changed our perspective of the world or universe. In the case of Neil - and his first steps on to the lunar surface - this was to take us to other worlds. But the painting also shows another "arc" that connects the three paintings in the series. As one of the items taken to the surface of the moon and returned to Earth, Neil carried in the Eagle LM, a wooden fragment and fabric strip taken from the original Wright Flyer aircraft. So in a way, the Wright Brothers first flight continued all the way to the moon and back. Consequently another link between all three pictures is that the State of Ohio is visible as part of the backdrop.
The painting is based on photographs taken during the actual Apollo 11 mission (see https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.html). At one point I used actual lunar maps to help create the lunar surface to show the Sea of Tranquility, but the sharp black-and-gray contrast was not particularly pleasing, so I ended up doing my "own thing" with a largely fictional lunar surface. But the approximate placement of the Eagle, Columbia and Earth are relatively correct - although the Earth should be higher in the sky, a different face would show of the Earth, Columbia would be further to the right (and too distant to see), and the Eagle would be rotated so the windows would be face down. Artistic license was at work here! I tried to accurately represent the colors of Eagle and used reference photo's from the mission along with my own pictures of the LM at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It is my impression that each of the constructed LM's had some minor variations in external color and structural features - so I hope this rendition captures as much of what Eagle looked like.
On the left side of the "sky" is the constellation Cygnus (the Swan) to call out the importance birds played in helping the Wright Brothers understand the importance of aerodynamic flight control. On the right is the constellation Aquila (the Eagle) to continue the bird theme - since the Lunar Module was called Eagle.
The painting was made on Arches 20 x 30 inch artboard with a cold press finish. Tracing paper was used to create the underlying graphite outlines. PowerPoint was used to help arrange the various reference photo's. The tracings were made by pencil using an inverse copy of the slides, and then transferred onto the artboard. No masking fluid was used and very little gouache was used for highlights (e.g. clouds). The lunar surface was created using two colors (Payne's gray and Davy's gray) which produced a wonderful granulation. The craters were simply created by scrubbing out the highlights and darkening the shadows with the same combination of gray.
These are the Winsor & Newton/Cotman watercolors used (a combination of pan and tubes):
- French ultramarine
- Permanent rose
- Vandyke brown
- Payne's gray
- Davy's Gray
- Raw sienna
- Burnt sienna
- Cobalt blue
- Cerulean blue
- Cadmium yellow hue
- Cadmium orange
- Yellow ochre
- Cadmium red deep hue
- Emerald
- Lamp black
- Zinc white (gouache)
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