The Cathedral Galaxy

[jshoer]

I'm loving this one a lot. Cool concept, perfectly executed. Can't wait to see it finished !

Wow, such high praise from such an amazing artist! Thank you so much!

Looking great & full of promises!

I hope to deliver!

This is really awesome. Curious how it would have looked on black paper with a white pen.
Keep it up! That's a lot of dots.

Glad you like it! Yeah, I thought about getting some other papers/pens a little, but ultimately I decided that some features (like the giant stars) look better as black-on-white, so I'm going to do some digital compositing. I'm also working my my tools at hand!

Speaking of lots of dots, here's an overall progress image. I've completed my first pass of stippling on both spirals, and I just finished my 2nd pass on the "lower" arm. The "upper" arm I've completed a second pass from the center out to about the "east" compass point. High resolution photo, though I wasn't careful with lighting or focus conditions:
overview-update-201122.JPG

And here's a quick invert, to give a sense of how the stippled stars will look!
overview-invert-update-201122.JPG

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At the intersection of the Sector Republic, the Imperium of the Triumvirate, and Amseile, lies Harrow's Core. One distinguishing feature of Harrow's Core is the large number of star clusters within the galactic spiral -- like many such features in this galaxy, it remains unknown whether this is a natural formation or a lasting product of gravitic engineering by the ancient precursor civilization.
harrows-core-update.JPG
Only two species are native to Harrow's Core, Harrow's Seeds and Harrow's Sculptors. Other few habitable stars in the region are populated by species that have moved in from outside and made Harrow's Core their adopted home. The politics and culture of the region are dominated by the native peoples of Harrow's Core. Their practices and beliefs are strange enough to outsiders that, despite the relative abundance of arterial warp-channel Anchors in the region, Harrow's Core remains isolationist and enigmatic. Travelers are not harassed or unwelcome; they simply do not often connect with the people they encounter and pass through to other business. That Harrow's Core has remained distinct from both the Imperium and Amseile suggests to some scholars that they have mastered a powerful precursor artifact for defensive purposes. This theory has never been confirmed, no polity has attacked the Core in millennia to provide evidence for such a defense.