I have a few friends working on NASA's Mars 2020 Rover (Perseverance) in various capacities, and prodded by one of them I decided to honor the spacecraft launch later this month with a map of its landing site!

For anyone who doesn't follow space exploration, Perseverance is the success to the Curiosity rover and it will be landing in Jezero Crater on Mars, a place once known to have a river flowing into a lake in the crater floor. Here's a NASA page showing a height map of the crater, with the rover landing site circled. "Jezero" actually means "lake" in Bosnian.

Now, of course, I decided to fictionalize the crater...I drew it flooded and in the fantasy-map style I used for my challenge map a couple months ago. I drew the place names mostly from fiction having to do with Mars, with an emphasis on the pulp era. I'll put the list below the map in case you want to know what all the hidden references are.

I am pretty sure that I finished all the inkwork today - all with Copic multiliners, mostly 0.1 and 0.03. My 0.03 is starting to give out, but I used that for some lighter work! I was going for an overall pulp sci-fi classical feel, so I leaned into Greek and Victorian and American West motifs and anchored the border with a statue. (Also, I hid the Mars 2020 mission logo in the border with my signature.)

Jezero_BW.JPG

I'll be working on colored pencils next, and then painting it, just like that challenge map. You'll be seeing a lot of red, and the spiky alien forests will turn green!

"Thuvia," "Ptarth," and "Tarkas" come directly from Burrough's John Carter of Mars books.
"Ylla" is a character Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles.
"Rhiannon" and "Ptakuth" are references to the works of Leigh Brackett, who was known as the Queen of Space Opera!
"Jonz" is adapted from the name of the Martian Manhunter in DC Comics.
"Hiroko" was a prominent character in Robinson's Mars Trilogy.
"Tachi" comes from The Expanse.
"Xelion" is my adaptation of "Helium," which I didn't really want to use directly, again from Burroughs.
"Zsa" is a reference to the actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was in some truly terrible pulpy sci-fi movies.
And, finally, I just couldn't resist hiding a Galaxy Quest reference in there!