Great space illustrators: David A Hardy

Forward to the past - interstellar communication visualised by David A Hardy in 1972

This is a sudden posting, prompted merely by reading that Saturn is in opposition throughout the next few weeks, making it at its brightest to the naked eye.

So it’s a good time to recall the small telescope I owned in my childhood and to retrieve from my shelves a book called Challenge of the Stars (published by Mitchell Beazley in 1972 – although mine was a cheaper edition from Book Club Associates).

Challenge of the Stars by Patrick Moore and David A Hardy (1972)

The book is by Patrick Moore and illustrated by David A Hardy, whose images deserve some plaudits, I reckon, as I now realise they are the pictures I still have in my mind’s eye when I visualise the planets of our solar system. More about Hardy later…

Those were the days when a great Planetary Grand Tour of the outer solar system was still on the cards, in a decade when the gas giants were in a conveniently close alignment and could be used as gravitational slingshots to help a probe on its way after taking close-up pictures.

Patrick Moore enthused about the project but sadly NASA budget cuts meant it was scrapped, although some elements of it were included in the Voyager Program, which sent two probes in 1977 to fly by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Pluto by David A Hardy

I think this image may have been an inspiration for the Pluto painting... Grotto in an iceberg, photographed during Captain Scott's British Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1913

I remember in those days, living in a village, where the skies were still black at night and you could see the Milky Way, I would stand on the back garden path with my telescope, steadied by my father’s hands, as we looked for planets.

An inhabited planet of a star outside the galaxy, pictured by David A Hardy - in the dark skies of by childhood we could see the Milky Way...

Was it a dream that I actually saw, distinctly, Jupiter’s great red spot and the four Galilean Moons? It must be true, I still remember the excitement…

Jupiter seen from Europa, one of the four Galilean Moons, by David A Hardy

An image of Jupiter's Great Red Spot taken by Voyager 1 in February 1979...

And don’t I also remember seeing the rings of Saturn as a faint bulge either side of the planet?

Saturn seen from its sixth moon, Rhea, imagined by David A Hardy

We were great fans of The Sky at Night TV programme with Patrick Moore. That and the Apollo moonshots, of which the last was in the very year the book was published, fed into the astronomy hobby. As did a love of science fiction (mostly Robert A Heinlein and Star Trek in those days).

The skies were so clear and dark that we would go out and watch the first artificial satellites going over like shooting stars.

From 1963 to 1973 the Mariner probes were sent to the inner planets of the solar system, Mercury, Mars and Venus, and at the time of Challenge of the Stars the Viking missions were coming up. The black-and-white images they returned were amazing, of course, but not a patch on the imagined scenes of David A Hardy.

Mercury by David A Hardy - a lifeless world of silence and desolation...

David A Hardy was born on April 10, 1936, in Bournville, Birmingham, home of Cadbury’s chocolate. In fact he worked at the factory, painting chocolate boxes, while he learned his trade as an illustrator.

Mars seen from its moon Deimos, by David A Hardy

Hardy is now the longest-established space artist still living, having illustrated his first book at the age of 18 in 1954 – Suns, Myths and Men for Patrick Moore. He had five days to produce eight black-and-white illustrations before joining the RAF for National Service.

A planet with real atmosphere - Venus by David A Hardy

Hardy says his early influences were Chesley Bonestell in the USA and Ralph Smith in the UK.

Bonestell had painted a view of Saturn as seen from its giant moon Titan in the 1940s and Hardy also used this theme.

Saturn seen from Titan by Chesley Bonestell

Saturn viewed from Titan, by David A Hardy - from Challenge of the Stars

Before the Apollo landings on our own moon, it was thought the surface was very sharp and rocky, as illustrated in Hardy’s early paintings, but when men had actually walked on its surface we realised it had long eroded from its pristine sharpness and had become much softer and more powdery.

Moonlanding - an early version by Hardy

A recent work of PhotoShop art with acrylic flourishes by Hardy. He revisits the moon in a knowingly retro way, still using the sharp 'Bonestellian' style for its surface

From September 1996 to June 2000 Hardy was President of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) and he is still European Vice President of the IAAA.

David Hardy self-portrait as a biker on Mars - maybe he should wear a helmet...

David A Hardy also painted distant stars - this is Zeta Aurigae seen from an orbiting planet, from Challenge of the Stars

'Night' on the planet of a star in a globular cluster, pictured by David A Hardy - the alien 'life form' consists of oxygen-filled sacs floating in a carbon dioxide atmosphere

Although he originally painted in acrylic or occasionally oils, he now uses PhotoShop – and is still active in the world of space art. If I am not mistaken, it will be his 75th birthday on Sunday. Happy Birthday, sir!

Find out much more about his current work – and a more detailed biography – on his own website David A Hardy’s AstroArt …

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Space art is in many ways similar to science fiction art and you may be interested to look at my other blog posts on SFF illustrators:

Frank Frazetta

Frank Kelly Freas

Patrick Woodroffe

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