When I was painting traditionally — before I moved to digital media — I almost never did preliminary sketches... except perhaps for the occasional thumbnail doodle to remind me of an idea. And after doing astronomical art for forty years, not much has changed in that regard: I have such a clear-cut idea of how the finished artwork is going to look that in a very real sense the preliminary sketches are already done. Now I work almost exclusively in digital media (a decision I made when I found myself having to both write and illustrate a series of ten books... and realizing there was no way to meet my deadlines). I had been reluctant to abandon traditional media, but when I presented my first efforts to my friends and heard them say, “Why, these look just like Ron Miller paintings!” I was sold — so much so that I’ve done only a couple traditional paintings since.
