Magnificient Desolation

EDIT: I felt a little bad, I talked about a proto-star but didn't really portray one. So I decided to go back and try, and I think it came out well. I also gave the nebula a little more depth with the eraser.

I present to you, Magnificent Desolation! I wanted to try out nebulae again, and it came out much better than the first one (in my opinion). I also wanted to do some more with scale, since my planets seem to dominate most of my work. Lighting was also important in this piece, but I think I have that figured out.

There's no real story behind this one, though a bit of an explanation is needed to those not as adept at astronomy as myself. Essentially this scene is within a nebula; a cloud of dust and gases that forms when a star explodes in a supernova explosion. Often they disperse and eventually collapse back into a star due to gravity, though there is a very long period where the nebula extends over several lightyears and smaller stars form inside of it (almost like a nursery for baby stars, if babies gradually consumed their nursery and slowly grew into enormous size). Planets also form within nebulae, and orbit these "proto-stars." This is one such phenomenon, though an intelligent race must have either terraformed a planet or moved an inhabitant planet into the nebula, as there would not be enough energy from any proto-star to form a planet capable of supporting life naturally. The only concievable reason I can see for an intelligent race to do this is to hide from their enemies (and probably harvest the gas and dust from the nebula for whatever reason). So this planet finds itself lost in a cloud of magnificent desolation; devoid of life, but not of beauty.

Sister Picture: [link]


Adobe Photoshop CS2
3888 x 2592 px
300 dpi
~3 hours