Uranus

Uranus – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Uranus is my most recent painting and the final one in my abstract planet series. In these paintings, I like to imagine that the planets are connected with the surrounding waves of colorful energy and smaller spheres all moving through space together. I’m so enjoying getting back to painting and this one was a fun to do.

Uranus is the seventh planet out from our sun and takes 84 years to travel around the sun. It is a blue ice gas giant and is the coldest planet in the solar system. A full day on Uranus is 17 hours and it spins west to east unlike most of the other planets. Another unique fact is the Uranus’s axis is 99 degrees which means that it rotates on its side, so it spins like a ball rolling down a hill. I tried to show this as I painted Uranus with the light from the sun on the right side and the ring almost perpendicular on the page.

Uranus was discovered in 1781 and is named after the Greek god Uranus who was the god of the sky. In astrology Uranus rules the sign of Aquarius and it symbolizes the rebel, the outsider and the genius of the heavens. Since it was discovered at the time of the French and American Revelations, this planet has been correlated with independence, and breaking old structures.

Pluto

Pluto – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

Here is a new painting for my planet series. Pluto is the furthest planet out from the sun and takes 248 years to complete its orbit. It was discovered in 1930. Because it was so far away from the sun and very cold Pluto was named after the Roman god of the underworld, he was the judge of death but also the god of wealth because of the metals and riches that lie underground. Pluto is considered a dwarf planet because it is so small. Although Pluto is small, in astrology Pluto is a powerful planet of transformation that rules the astrological sign of Scorpio.

With all that in mind, I decided to paint Pluto small in a rich dark red color. The brightness around it symbolizes the riches of the god Pluto. This painting is darker than the others because it’s far from the sun with no other planets in sight. I used layers and layers of paint. I’m fairly pleased and will start a new painting this weekend.

Mercury

Mercury – acrylic painting by Heni Sandoval

In continuing the theme of painting abstract planets, I decided to paint Mercury. Mercury is the smallest planet in the solar system, just slightly larger than earth’s moon. It is the closest planet to the sun and takes just 88 days to make its trip around the sun. Because of this, from our view here on earth, it appears that mercury always travels close to the sun at a fast speed. Perhaps that’s why the ancients saw Mercury is the messenger of the gods. The actual color of mercury is a brownish grey but in astrology mercury’s color is symbolized as an emerald green.

I chose green for mercury’s color. Because mercury is zippy and small, I pictured it in my mind that it had a texture of the inside of a golf ball with rubber bands tightly wound together. I painted lines going all different directions overlaying each other as if they were communicating.

A few years back when I was going through my dad’s coin collection, I loved looking at the old mercury dimes. As a Greek god, Mercury was the messenger of the gods and had a winged hat and winged shoes; but he also was the patron of commerce which is why he must have been featured on the silver dime. He often carried a caduceus in his left hand. A caduceus is a a wand with two snakes twined around it with wings on top. He was somewhat of a magician and could do magic with the caduceus, with a touch of the wand he could heal illness and turn metal into gold

I decided to paint mercury close to the large sun with the caduceus symbol between them. I painted the caduceus upside down so it would be fairly subtle. I enjoyed learning about mercury and some of the mythology, it helps me to focus on a theme as paint these abstracts.