Forget Princess, I Want to Be an Astrophysicist

Back in January I showed off the picture below of a Christmas present from my mother. I've finally finished painting it, and it came out quite well if I do say so myself. Here's the original canvas:

And here's the finished version:

I really, really like how this came out. There's a few minor blemishes—mostly invisible in the photo—where I over-painted the boundaries and need touch them up when I get access to the Midnight Blue I used for the background again, but on the whole this gives me joy every time I see it. You might notice that the stars are all colored as if their sizes correspond to their relative masses, with the smallest being reddish, then orange, yellow, etc. I had to get creative with some of the colors since I finished it at home in quarantine without my full range of pigments, but I think it looks good. I decided that what looked like a ringed planet with a star coming out of it was actually a black hole with accretion disk devouring a star, and since I happened to have my Black 2.0 at home I was able to make it work. I'm glad to finally be able to show this off, it's been an interesting exercise in constraints painting it. While I've gone for very simple, solid shading much of the time I've also gone for more subtle and realistic shading in places, but I've stayed within the lines everywhere without adding anything. (I thought about stretching the accretion disk into photon rings around the black hole, but decided to stick to the lines.) Anyway, I now have this hanging behind me at my computer desk at home to continually remind me of my vocational aspirations. A hui hou!