Following are a series of albums containing sketches, of various astronomical objects. I'm always working on developing my skills as an astronomical sketcher, so these albums are a document of my progress over time. The sketches also provide a good idea of what you can expect to see when you look into the eyepiece of an amateur telescope.
I use a variety of telescopes for my sketches. Currently, I use a 10" F/7 homebuilt Dobsonian, a LITEBOX 15" F/5 Dobsonian (pictured), a William Optics Megrez 80 FD refractor, and an Orion StarMax-102 4-inch Maksutov. I sometimes sketch through my partner's Tele Vue 102 4-inch refractor, and 8" Meade LX-10 SCT. Some sketches are also done with 7x50 and 12x60 binoculars. Many Sun sketches were made using an Orion ShortTube-80 refractor I previously owned.
Each of my sketches is done at the eyepiece; I do not recopy or redraw sketches once indoors, as some astronomical sketchers do. Perhaps I'm a purist; I believe the function of the sketch is to be as faithful a record as possible of my view through the telescope, as much as it is "art" (for some definition of the term). That said, I've started working the computer into my sketching routine, by using graphics software to process the raw sketch into a final image. My intent is to better replicate the experience of looking through the eyepiece of a telescope, something photographs are terrible at doing.
Each sketch notes the instrument, time, and conditions. Seeing and transparency are on a scale from 1 to 10, 10 being excellent.
