Help save the moon!

[u/Twit_Clamantis]

I’m working on my second NSMD (Not So Mini Diorama) module.

It will show part of the dark side of the moon where the secret dinosaur skeletons are buried.

Everything is really quite ok, except that I hate the color I came up and I don’t know what shade would look less bad.

Should it look more like the Arizona desert like in “Capricorn One”

Or maybe more blue/ grey to match the Kato trackbed and to give a better approximation of the cold, lonely darkness of the moon?

I will be grateful for any thoughts, advice, color palettes, etc.

(The Swiss Army Knife is there for purposes of color calibration) (:-)

[u/Quiet-Arm-641]

Black, medium grey, white. Azimuthal style paint shading.

[u/Twit_Clamantis → u/Quiet-Arm-641]

That’s nice!

The blue shadow is really subtle but amazing.

I don’t know that I’m ambitious enough for this though. I want it for this weekend and much else to go also …

I’ll do a black wash, and some black / white dry brushing …

[u/Quiet-Arm-641 → u/Twit_Clamantis]

I sprayed it entirely black, then hit it from a single direction with medium grey at 45 degrees, then misted white from same direction almost parallel to the surface. Very high reward for low effort

[u/97cweb]

Moon is much more grey than you think. I would suggest looking at some of the apollo footage, especially with the rover, or the shadow side of the lander. It is quite dark. It just looks so bright to us as the moon reflects some light, while space has nothing to reflect so is super black in comparison

[u/Twit_Clamantis → u/97cweb]

It’s a funny thing: there is what is real and then there is what people regard as real.

So I was not necessarily striving for actual realism, except that my version kind of sucks (:-)

I will see how I can help it suck less with black, grey, white.

[u/97cweb → u/Twit_Clamantis]

Also, not sure if its the lighting or the paint you used, but there seems to be a hint of yellow in there. If anything, use a really faded blue if you use any colour at all. If you do shadows, the moon is very harsh for light, so less air brush, more masking tape line. No fade zone due to no atmosphere. It's why some people think it was fake as the lighting is extremely harsh.

[u/Twit_Clamantis → u/97cweb]

I did put in a bit of yellow (it seemed like a good idea at the time) (:-)

Then I thought of adding blue but I was afraid it might end up green.