Going into this project, I had a pretty good idea of what I was planning on making. Sadly, mother nature decided to turn the AC on this week, so I was unable to paint the planets in my piece by the official due date. Now, I was able to get a few hours over the freezing point so I was able to complete my project.

First I sprayed my entire cardboard canvas with white to prime the surface. Then I used various spray paint colors that I borrowed from my roommate to make pools of color in a diagonal line. Then I crumpled up some newspaper, laid it over the puddles of paint, then peeled them off to reveal a planet-like texture. Then I lightly sprayed black on one side of each planet and white on the other to illustrate shadows and highlights. After the paint dried, I covered the messy paint splotches with different sized plastic cups and weighed them down with rocks from outside my house. Finally, I sprayed the exposed cardboard with black to create a night sky, then sprayed my fingers in white and flicked tiny paint specks on top to make stars.

The night sky felt a little empty even after painting the planets, so I thought I would add some space crafts. I used a box cutter to remove the ends of a soda can and flattened the aluminum out to make a thin metal sheet. I traced an ellipse on the colored side of the sheet so I could cut out the shape of the UFO without any visible marks showing once they were glued onto the canvas. I got a plastic box that a kendama I recently ordered came in. I traced a dome shape and cut it out of the box to use as a windshield on the UFO. I also used the same plastic to cut out a flame shape, and colored it with red, orange, and yellow to use as the UFO’s thruster. Lastly, I drew little alien heads on a tissue box turned inside out, then carefully cut it out and glued it behind the dome of the UFO. I repeated these steps to make two other smaller UFOs to fill more space and give the aliens some company.

The bottom of the piece represents the surface of a planet the viewer is standing on. To do this, I cut random shapes out of a cardboard box and used acrylic paint I also borrowed from a roommate to color them purple, blue, and turquoise. As the space filled up, I had to cut the pieces smaller to fill in the gaps between the larger pieces. Once this was done, I thought the surface of the planet needed more texture, so I crushed up some styrofoam from the trash, scattered them around the planet’s surface, and glued them down.

To finish the piece up, I used acrylic white paint to make a shooting star, a staple of the spacecore aesthetic and of space art in general. I also felt like at least one of the planets should have rings, so I used the same paint to draw an ellipse around the biggest planet to create the image of an asteroid belt. At this point, I felt like the project was completed.

Although I wish I could have gotten my spray painting done before Boulder froze, and that I could have posted this report on time, I am happy with the end result of my work and how I exhibited the spacecore aesthetic. This project served as a creative getaway from the technical challenges of my other classes, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was able to commit a lot of time and effort into this project without wanting to pull my hair out, and even though the finished product is not perfect by any stretch, I’m proud of the work I put in and I hope you all like what I made.