Cosmos 
A quick digital painting of the cosmos. This was definitely inspired by all the science/fiction I entertained myself with today. ;)
This only took a couple of hours to draw. I started with a simple base of dark cloud-like shapes. Then added lighter strokes and details for the stars and cosmic dust.
The planets are actually really simple to create. I start with a dark circle, then use a simple cloud-like texture, then apply a mask and softly mask out the edges (or interior area, based on the light's direction), then draw in a few more detailed shapes for highlights or extra cloud/surface texture - it probably takes less than 2 minutes to draw planets using this method.
I could have made this more interesting by adding a subject, like a spaceship or space-station... Jul 7th 2012 