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by Don White Artdreamer
Greetings!
welcome to my art gallery!
Thank you for visiting! I love to paint imaginary satellite views of outer space backgrounds and undiscovered planets. Also, I have awesome news! You can see 3 of my paintings on display at the National Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB from February 26th until October 1st! I am honored to be part of the IAAA's Beauty of Space Exhibit in 2021! https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Upcoming/Events/
Additionally, I have recently returned from exhibiting at Spacefest 2021! It was super fun and an awesome cross-country road trip with my son!
I hope the images you find here spark your imagination and inspire you to bring some space art into your life! My name is Don White, and I am an outer space artist from Saint Paul Minnesota. I've developed a technique that combines mixed media painting with digital techniques. I love to paint imaginary satellite views of outer space backgrounds and undiscovered planets, which is to say, I draw circles and paint skies and imagine what it might look like in outer space. I can remember drawing planets when all my friends were drawing dinosaurs. My work today is inspired by the journey of Voyager 2 - In November of 2018, at 119 astronomical units - (119 times the distance from the sun than we are!!), Voyager 2 officially left the solar system and ventured into interstellar space....what if I could hitch a ride...? When I paint, I use watercolors, acrylics, gel pens and alcohol inks on very thick 300# heat pressed watercolor paper to create the image, then I use digital filtering to finish. I am also a Getty Images contributor, Adobe Stock contributor, Dreamstime contributor and Shutterstock contributor which means my images have been curated and approved for commercial licensing and can be used in print, presentations, broadcasts, websites, book covers, album covers, and on social media sites. I am still allowed to sell my artwork on an individual basis -- message me if you have any questions.
Personally, I believe the universe holds much more information than our senses can perceive, and reaching out into space will challenge everything we ever thought was true. I have been fascinated with interstellar travel and drawing pictures of space since childhood - and now, as an artist, this barrage of newly discovered planets and celestial objects lights up my imagination with questions;“Is there sound in space?”…Is there really a Planet 9?… How long does it take to get to Mars?”… “What is the Great Attractor?”… “Exactly how does mass bend spacetime?”…“Why is Light a particle when you are looking at it but a wave if you’re not?”...and on and on...
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Inspiration
It was something Dr. Carl Sagan wrote that started a flood of ideas in my brain - he said: “Since in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space - every surviving civilization must become spacefaring. Not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable - staying alive. If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.”
It was a brand new concept to me at the time, and it shook me to the core….Yes, a single cataclysmic event or collision that happening anywhere in our galactic neighborhood…. could obliterate all of US and all of THIS and all of everything that CAME BEFORE !!
I hope that in even a tiny way, my work starts some conversations that move us forward in that direction.
Techniques
I've been a doodler and a day-dreamer since the third grade... I've become obsessed with the idea of turning thoughts into pictures, and I will experiment with any medium I can think of to try to turn the pictures in my mind into images I can share and get them out of my head and onto paper... My Mom was an artist, so I knew how to create my own workspace, and I learned to be brave and just start with anything - watercolors, acrylics, alcohol inks, gel pens, ink correction fluid, even washable Crayola markers! First I splash a bunch of stuff onto a full sheet of Arches brand hot press watercolor paper to give myself a background to start with -which is very abstract at this point. Then I take a few days to start stare at the image until my mind starts to discern shapes and forms and ghostly hints of images where I saw nothing before. At that point I start to see what the image wants to become (if that makes any sense at all), and then I use any combination of the thicker mediums to add and blend the "characters" into my background wash. At that point I still have to pull the image together to know if I have anything... the trick that works for me is to figure out where the light is coming from inside the image itself. If I get that right, cool things can happen. Next, I get a high-resolution image made of my painting, then load the file into Photoshop to tweak and crop the image till it looks like I want. Then I have it converted a second time into a high-resolution digital file that gives us the intensely colored pieces you see here.
career highlights
Beginning February 26th 2021 until September 30th 2021, I am honored to announce that I will have three of my artworks on temporary loan to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB outside Dayton Ohio. Check out their website page at https://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/Visit/Museum-Exhibits/New-Exhibits/ I specialize in speculative outer space art - "Imaginary glimpses of faraway places" I guess. I became a member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (iaaa.org) in 2018. Before Covid-19 I was active in the Minneapolis/St Paul MN local art scene - Convergence - ALCON - Art-A-Whirl - Art Attack - Saints games, etc. In 2020 I will be focusing on increasing my exposure and client base online. Additionally, I have recently returned from exhibiting at Spacefest 2021 in Tucson AZ! It was super fun and an awesome cross-country road trip with my son!
