Psyche’s Wings
Therese Manesia Cook
March 5th, 2025
Major: Physics
Genre/Medium: Digital Art (Procreate)
About the work:
Continuing on the theme of illustrating scale, my second painting “Psyche’s Wings” uses an imaginary scene on Earth to convey the size of the Psyche spacecraft and its extensive wingspan. It was my first time painting something this large, so it was a challenge and a learning experience for me!
I started out small–when brainstorming this idea with tiny doodles on paper, I knew that I wanted to include characters in the scene to give viewers a relatable sense of scale and emotion. I imagined a character standing beneath the spacecraft, with her arms outstretched to mimic the great stretch of Psyche’s solar panels. Perhaps her friend could be with her, looking up in awe.
Once I had the gist of what I wanted to make, I used VR (Tiltbrush on Quest) to block out the composition with very simple stick figures. This allowed me to easily adjust the placement/posing of the characters and spacecraft, then snap test “photos” of them using the in-app camera, all with real perspective in 3D. I was looking for something striking, and once I found a view I liked, I drew it out more carefully on a large canvas in Photoshop. At this stage, I referenced the available engineering 3D model of Psyche as well as cleanroom photos from NASA’s online archive while drawing the spacecraft. Read more…
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