The Cathedral Galaxy

[jshoer]

I decided to try a few more designs for embellishments. I'm done with the artwork - I think! - and I want to do the pen for any cartouches or whatnot before I take a final photo and start to work on color digitally.

You've seen this style already - I call it "Cathedral," but here are two variants with a title:


Riffing on the theme of giant space artifacts scattered throughout the galaxy, here are two more ideas. I call this one "Tech:"


...and this one "Derelict:"


Finally, just to give a hint of what it might look like without any additional artwork to go with the titles, here's floating:


I'm having some trouble deciding exactly which path to take as a starting point. What do you think? I want it to fit in with the rest of the map, but not be overpowering - since my galaxy should really take center stage. Speaking of the galaxy, here's where we're at after loads more stippling and adding some bright stars with diffraction spikes. It definitely got busier along the upper arm, which probably affects which embellishments will do best: