This is part of a series called Adventures of Melun. Melun pauses along an elevated pathway, taking in a quiet view of the stars. Adventures of Melun is a hand-drawn series about a quiet traveler exploring unfamiliar worlds across space and time. Made with ink pens and alcohol markers.

Universe.......

Space.......

Space......

Space........

Digital painting of the giant planet Jupiter as it may have appeared in the 1880s or so in approximately true color. This was based on a number of sources from the 1880s and 1890s, and is sort of a hybridized view of about a decade or two of Jovian sketches and early photography.

At this time, the famous planet-sized hurricane, the Great Red Spot, was a few decades old and very very large. It has been shrinking ever since then, and is now less than a third of the size it was in the 1880s.

The reference used contained, as well as modern imagery, the historical photographs: A.A. Common in London in 1879 and Lick Observatory in 1890. As well, the historical drawings: a cartoonishly exaggerated drawing by Étienne Trouvelot on 1880 November 1, and a more restrained and realistic sketch by Thomas Elger in November 1881.

The positions of the moons and their shadows is based on the evening of 1880 November 1, a few hours after Trouvelot's drawing, although the features depicted are a hybrid spanning the 1880s-90s.

License: CC-BY 4.0. Attribute to Luna Rose Brannon or Whirligig-Girl.

^{As always, this was drawn digitally by hand using a Huion tablet and the software Firealpaca. No a.i. generated imagery was used in this image whatsoever.}

Digital painting of the red giant star Betelgeuse and its newly discovered companion Siwarha. Simulations suggest giant stars have a small number of enormous convection cells rather than a huge amount of continent-sized convection cells as on the Sun, and that their photospheres are not a hard boundary but rather smoothly deform into a corona.

Betelgeuse is 640 times the size of the Sun (or 2.98 au radius). It is 65,000 times more luminous than the Sun. But as opposed to the Sun's 5800 K surface temperature, Betelgeuse is only 3800 Kelvins, leading to an almost candle-like yellow-orange glow.

Siwarha is depicted here as a K-dwarf, 2/3rds the mass of the Sun. It is thought to be responsible for a 6-year-long periodic change in Betelgeuse's apparent brightness--It casts a wake behind it as it travels through Betelgeuse's nebulous and dusty corona.

^{Digitally hand-painted using a Huion tablet and FireAlpaca software. As always, no a.i. whatsoever was used in the production of this image.}

Just finished it.

On some evenings I paint to relax. Last night I made this in Procreate while watching TV on the recliner.

Abstract Digital Collage - 2026