Solar Eclipse

Solar Eclipse is a new painting for my Celestail Bodies series. The idea for this painting came to me for two reasons. First, after painting last week’s Sun Moon and Planets, I felt the strong composition of the large sun in the center worked well and wanted to try that again. The second reason was because of the recent spring equinox of equal day and night led me to think of doing another painting with the balance of light and dark similar to my crow with dove paintings. I then thought, why not do a new painting as a compliment to the first using a large sun darkened by the moon due to an eclipse?

The upcoming total solar eclipse is traveling across North America on April 8th 2024. In this painting I put in the planets as they will appear from earth’s view. They are bundled in one area in the sky, I added asteriods, stars and also the green devil comet which may be able to be seen during the eclipse. It was challenging to get the space dark but not too dark around the eclipsed sun, while also making sure the planets were light enough. I think it works pretty well.

There is lots of buzz here about it here in the US, which is probably another reason it came to mind to paint. It will be exciting for those who live or visit under the path of totality of this solar eclipse.