Standing here staring at the screen. I'm working on art, and I'm wondering: what color are nebulae, anyway? All the images we see are artificially colored, so far as I know. Like this series of images from the Hubble, of the Crab Nebula. I could lose hours wandering through the image gallery on that site.
I could choose hot pinks and lime greens and be right. I could get deep into color theory and why certain colors make us happy, or introspective, or passionate... Or I could try to deduce the possible molecular composition of the gas clouds and what we know about the colors of the flames from those elements/compounds. That's what the scientists do. The question then becomes: am I aiming for science, or art?
I could just use my imagination. Which requires more coffee.
I liked the warm colors for this one. So it's "Pop Nebula"
The "Purple Ice" was never meant to be realistic - in fact, this peice was rendered to be a part of a magical effect on a book cover. I liked the lacy edges of the 'clouds'
"Sword Nebula" was again, not realistic, but the colors evoke emotion for me, and a sense of a weird and wonderful universe to explore.