An original pencil illustration of the SpaceX CRS-3 Falcon 9 Dragon launch on April 18, 2014. Credit and copyright: Wendy Clark.
Here’s something you don’t see much anymore: an original pencil drawing of a launch. This drawing by Wendy Clark from the UK is reminiscent of the pre-spaceflight days, before we had actual images of launches, and just our dreams of spaceflight. This isn’t the first time Clark has drawn a launch (here’s an article we posted of her drawings of the MAVEN launch and the final space shuttle launch) but this one is almost a contrast in themes: the latest technology in launches from the upstart SpaceX team vs. an old-school, old fashioned, by-hand product.
For this drawing, she reiterated what she told us previously: “Don’t let anyone tell you drawing a rocket is easy!” Clark said on Flickr. “The Strongback was a complete dog of an object to draw, such a maze of engineering.”
She also captured the ‘dirty’ side of launches: “Dust and gravel being thrown up everywhere, and the lovely Falcon 9 rocket was a little grubby on lift-off and I’ve tried to reflect that in the drawing,” she said.
Thanks to Wendy Clark for sharing her work on Universe Today’s Flickr site. See more of her drawings and photography on her own Flickr page.
The idea of Dyson Sphere’s has been around for decades. When Freeman Dyson explored the…
Roughly 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun was born from the gas and dust of…
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been giving us a fabulous new view on…
Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) were first theorized to exist in the late 1980s. In 2005, the…
We've only gotten one close-up view of Uranus and its moons, and it happened decades…
New research suggests an impact recently rattled Mars deeper than thought. HiRISE images a recent…