Monday, September 28, 2020

Under-Drawings for 'Tony Jenzano: Astronaut Trainer' book

Tony Jenzano (1919-1997) was considered a mechanical genius. He was one of the few people on Earth who could put together and run the Zeiss projector. The Zeiss Mark II is sort of a hidden character in this book. It appears in multiple illustrations, and without it or Tony, this story may have never happened.  The following are some of the under-drawings that were done before painting the colors. 



Tuesday, September 22, 2020

Astronaut Map

This map shows some of the stars that the astronauts had to memorize. Our hope is that maybe one day a kid would pick up this book and memorize these stars too, thus beginning their own astronaut training!👨🏽‍🎓👩🏻‍🎓















































Saturday, September 19, 2020

Zeiss II

Some of my favorite illustrations from the ‘Tony Jenzano: Astronaut Trainer’ book are now up on my website. www.benlinalexander.com


This one is a closeup of the Zeiss Mark II in action inside the planetarium dome. Before we had modern projectors, planetariums used these gigantic machines to project the stars onto the dome. 


I’ve included a few historic photos of these amazing machines for more context.