Sunset Flight to Cloud City

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This is my new oil-on-canvas piece, depicting the sun setting on a city floating in the clouds on some alien world. The two spheres contain lighter-than-air lifting gases; on a world with denser air like Venus they could contain airy and very open spaces fit for human habitation, but on a world with sparser air like Saturn they would need to be filled with hot hydrogen; I deliberately kept which kind of a world this is supposed to be ambiguous.

The dark-tinted buildings in-between constitute the city, where the vast majority of the human population would live, work, and play. Notice the large hangar at the bottom of the city built between the spheres, large enough even for a sizable airship to dock. One of these airships is approaching the city even now. A considerably peppier delta-wing (and undoubtedly VTOL considering the confined environment it has to land in) supersonic jet has taken off away from the city. We can also spy four recreational hot air balloons floating above the city, granting the denizens some beautiful views of the sunset-tinted cloudscape all around them.

Other features include the gondola-like structures below the two spheres, perhaps left over from a time before the spheres were brought together to support the present-day city, or built in to provide more space away from the crowds downtown. The towers protruding above and below the spheres provide radio communication with the outside world and help to harvest the atmosphere for use as raw material.

I really liked painting this one, bringing to life one of the visions talked about on this blog, and I think the warm reddish colors and the cloudscape came off very well. I intend to continue my efforts and improve my skill in the visual arts, especially painting, and you can expect to see more original art content on this website going forward.

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