You may ask "Why do we continue with astrosketching in this age of modern photographic equipment and expensive huge telescopes?"

There are several reasons:

I have seen the work of many astrosketchers. I think that there are basically two types of sketchers. The most common of those sketchers are already accomplished artists that bring their lifetime accumulated sketching skills to the field of astrosketching. The second are amateur astronomers who want to enhance their astronomical skills and record their observations. My recommendations are, if you already are proficient at sketching, don't change a thing. Just apply your acquired skills to the fascinating subject of astrosketching. Have fun.

A Workable Sketching Technique

Personally, I find individual styles the most interesting. Read on about this sketching technique, and apply or reject as you please. If you lack sketching skills, the following steps won't guarantee to make you a polished astrosketcher, but may help you to create your own sketching technique.

The first step in sketching is to sketch out the angles to the areas of interest in the telescope or photograph view. This becomes the template for inserting the sketch of each interesting feature.

Note that in this illustration, the center of the Eratosthenes crater (the X) was chosen as the reference point for the other features.

The next step, as illustrated at left, is to rough in the main feature limits. In this way, the overall geometry and feature sizes will come out properly in the final drawing.

With the geometry established and the main feature sizes drawn, it's time to rough in other features, such as other smaller features. In this case, smaller craters, mountain peaks, and crater interiors.

Now the lighting source can be considered, and the feature shadows sketched in. Note how what was just a bunch of lines is taking form as a clear crater and mountainous region.