Danielle Rose Baker 🚀

@planetaryartist.com

5004 Followers 843 Following

Watercolor space and science artist, geology nerd. đź’ś Rocks, gems, cats, spaceflight, Sailor Moon, Star Wars. IAAA Artist. Cancer survivor. Internet dinosaur. STS-133 NASA Tweetup alum. Medford, OR. She/her. Ally. Rebel. https://linktr.ee/manyfaceted

Two mostly-finished paintings lying on a table with paints and a brush. Both are from the Petrova line sample scene in Project Hail Mary above planet Adrian. The one on the left features red and silver wave shapes with a tiny HM vehicle floating through the middle. The one on the right shows the green and orange swirling atmosphere of Adrian with a silhouetted Grace floating beside the ship and astrophage sampler. Both are painted in color-shifting pearlescent watercolor on small black square coasters.
A shirt design spoofing the Fahrvergnügen Volkswagen campaign from the early 1990s. Design features a crosshatched circular logo with lines at 60º angles, forming many triangles, with text below that reads Widmanstätten. Widmanstätten patterns form in iron-nickel meteorites, a result of iron and nickel crystallizing in zero-g, and are revealed by lightly etching the polished meteorite surface with acid. They can be thick and chunky, or fine lines as pictured above.
The Three Lights band from Sailor Moon Cosmos: from left to right, Taiki, Seiya, and Yaten.
A glossy UV sticker with Rocky the five-legged alien from PROJECT HAIL MARY holding up a smoky quartz crystal cluster, in front of large words AMAZE AMAZE AMAZE in the background. The letters are colored with a brown/green/gold diagonal gradient.
FAREWELL TO BENNU by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of asteroid Bennu, trailing debris from the left, with an abstract mottled background in navy, purples and blacks. The sun, spacecraft OSIRIS-REx and a distant Earth are seen on the right-hand side.
HYAKUTAKE IN DREAMS by Danielle Rose Baker. A pearlescent watercolor painting on black paper of comet Hyakutake, which appeared in 1996 as a beautifully long, bright green-blue comet with a large icy core easily viewed with binoculars. It’s a vivid memory from the summer I graduated high school, and it’s stayed with me ever since.
A view inside the Artemis II Mission Control room at Johnson Space Center, where the Artemis cat plush is clearly seen in the background behind the CAPCOM desk. Someone has brought him a coffee and a special donut, which is really kind. It’s been a long day for both humans and moon kitties.
Danielle wearing her space trucker jacket (now no longer missing the all-important STS-133 pin) and Woman on the Moon tee, because fuck this administration’s erasure of anything DEI—and I’m sorry, fuck NASA for going along with it—WOMEN BELONG ON THE MOON.
HYAKUTAKE IN DREAMS by Danielle Rose Baker. A pearlescent watercolor painting on black paper of comet Hyakutake, which appeared in 1996 as a beautifully long, bright green-blue comet with a large icy core easily viewed with binoculars. It’s a vivid memory from the summer I graduated high school, and it’s stayed with me ever since.
Danielle wearing her STS-133 NASA Tweetup lanyard and badge, and “space trucker” denim jacket covered in space and nerdy pins and patches (including Artemis I, Woman on the Moon, and authentic shuttle-era Pilot position patch. And astronaut socks, astronaut earrings, two moonstones, and solar system bracelet for MAXIMUM GOOD VIBES.
A photo of an envelope from the Library of Congress, US Copyright Office, with a black business card lying on top showing a Jolly Roger-styled illustration of a “skull and crossbones”. The skull wears a fedora hat, stylishly tilted, and the “bones” are a crossed rock hammer and shovel.
A screenshot of a gif posted by Merriam-Webster with the text “Your 2026 word” and the word “hopeful”.
DIANA PIERCES THE AZURE SKY by Danielle Rose Baker. An ink illustration of a Saturn V rocket and launch tower during the launch of Apollo IV. The top two-thirds is a roiling sky of clouds rendered in blue, dark teal and navy inks, some with shimmering effects. Outlined against this, the launch tower is seen in shades of brown-orange. The rocket is bathed in warm light and yellow-tinged exhaust expands below, with dark shapes outlining the base of the launch pad.
ICE CLIFFS OF PLUTO by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of ice cliffs on the surface of Pluto as imaged by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2025, seen in rusty oranges, browns, and cool grays. The upper left shows a light-colored speckled surface representing ice plains, while the lower right shows more contrast, with deeply shadowed topography forming cliffs, pits, and ridges.
A lone surfer braves the crazy waves during king tide on 12/6/25, seen from Ecola State Park north of Cannon Beach, on the northern Oregon coast. The scene is moody and mostly monotones with a pearl-gray cloudy sky, dark waves and silvery reflections crossing horizontally across the photo. An arch rock thrusts upwards in the upper left corner of the photo, with misty spray obscuring the arch. The weather is windy and cold, and this person is clearly insane, but at least he has a full wetsuit on.
Video of a young male gray tabby medium-hair cat, definitely part Maine Coon, extremely fluffy and pretty chonky, rolling back and forth on his back in a sunbeam on a pale blue carpet. At times he is lazily batting at a shoe, or at the comforter on our bed. I pet the floofy belly; he looks insulted for my intrusion. His name is Pippin and he is three.
A woman with long curly blonde hair and pinkish glasses, wearing a dark blue scrub top and a light blue round glazed ceramic pendant with “Science Saves Lives” stamped onto it in black letters on a black cord. Behind her on the wall are various spooky decorations and a holo glitter cardboard skeleton, which we’re thinking of keeping beyond Halloween because it is, in fact, rad.
SHADOW OF THE EAGLE by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor lunar landscape in purples and faint golds against a dark indigo sky. A dark purple shadow of the Apollo 11 lunar lander stretches across the bumpy surface.
ORION ILLUMINATED by Danielle Rose Baker. A pearlescent watercolor painting on black of the star-forming regions in the Orion Nebula, as seen by the NIRCam instrument of the James Webb Space Telescope on September 11, 2022. The image shows the Orion Bar, a dense wall of dust and gas containing a bright star, θ2 Orionis A. Complex structures are revealed in wavelengths of infrared radiation from ionized and molecular gases, dust, and scattered starlight.
SPECTRAL LAGOON by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting using pearlescent paints on black paper, depicting the Lagoon Nebula as images by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2018, seen as a cloudy blue, purple and reddish background with a foreground cascade of rainbow spectrum colors.
GRAVITY SWALLOWS LIGHT by Danielle Rose Baker. A pearlescent watercolor painting on black paper of a black hole, shown with black center ringed by metallic silver paint, which swirls clockwise outwards in ribbons of reds, oranges, pinks and golds, with tinges of black.
DUST OF OSIRIS by Danielle Rose Baker. A painting of the top-down view of the opened sample return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. Circular sections and hexagonal bolts are seen among the rocky material in the middle ring, framed by lotus flower motifs and patterned circles with geometric ink designs drawn in an ancient Egyptian style with gold accents. A ring of painted turquoise, lapis and carnelian rectangles accented with gold surrounds the inkwork. Inspired by the decorative motifs of Tutankhamen’s treasures, and the Art Deco-tinged Egyptian Revival movement that arose from the discovery of said treasures.
FAREWELL TO BENNU by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of asteroid Bennu, trailing debris from the left, with an abstract mottled background in navy, purples and blacks. The sun, spacecraft OSIRIS-REx and a distant Earth are seen on the right-hand side.
Photo of my monitor showing two versions of a t-shirt design. The word “ROCKS” is shown in red in the style of the NASA “worm” logo. The top version has black text underneath that reads “Rockhounding Obsessed Cool Kids Society” (hello, I am nine years old apparently.) The bottom version has black text underneath that reads “I Love Space and Rocks. And Space Rocks.” (Accurate.)
A pencil sketch of the seven stars composing the Big Dipper, with lines connecting the constellation, in a chubby square lavender sketchbook. A gray Blackwing 602 pencil lies diagonally above the drawing.
FAREWELL TO BENNU by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of asteroid Bennu, trailing debris from the left, with an abstract mottled background in navy, purples and blacks. The sun, spacecraft OSIRIS-REx and a distant Earth are seen on the right-hand side.
BANDON DRIFTWOOD by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of multiple driftwood trunks emerging from the beach at Bandon, Oregon. Purplish clouds hang in the overcast sky above the whitecapped horizon. The wood is painted in warm oranges and browns.
STARSHIP SPECTRUM by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of the Starship test launch, showing the exhaust clouds billowing around the engines and multi-colored flames of the Super Heavy booster.
A swirled pile of circular vinyl stickers featuring my watercolor rendition of the New Horizons portrait of Pluto, against a watercolor painting background. Heaven knows I haven’t been painting on it, at least it’s an interesting backdrop.
WE STILL LOVE YOU by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of the dwarf planet Pluto, as imaged by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2015. The surface is seen in enhanced color, showing warm tans, reddish-browns and purple-grays, dotted with craters and ridges. A large heart-shaped feature dominates the lower right quadrant of the planet. The background is rendered in blues and purples.
MT. SHASTA SEEN FROM PILOT ROCK by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor landscape of forested terrain in the Siskiyou Mountains, layer upon layer of hills rendered in jewel-toned cool shades of purple, blue and green, with a distant high mountain peak showing faint glaciers. The sky is faintly blue. One of my early pieces.
DUST OF OSIRIS by Danielle Rose Baker. A painting of the top-down view of the opened sample return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. Circular sections and hexagonal bolts are seen among the rocky material in the middle ring, framed by lotus flower motifs and patterned circles with geometric ink designs drawn in an ancient Egyptian style with gold accents. A ring of painted turquoise, lapis and carnelian rectangles accented with gold surrounds the inkwork. Inspired by the decorative motifs of Tutankhamen’s treasures, and the Art Deco-tinged Egyptian Revival movement that arose from the discovery of said treasures.
A still life watercolor painting of dead/tumbled coral pieces in white and ivory colors, a black lava rock with small green olivine crystals, some shells including the pink-purple inside of a limpet, a tiny brown seed cone, and a black and white kula nut. The nut is ground down and drilled to be strung into leis!
Suomi Kyoko/Time Stranger from the manga series TIME STRANGER KYOKO by Tanemura Arina. A princess in a white gown with ribbons and clusters of pink flowers pinned to the skirt, wearing an elaborate silver crown and long white gloves against a purple moonlit sky. Her hair is golden and long, half-up, exposing her pointed ears. (But she isn’t an elf.)
Top-down photo of large hydrangea bushes full of delicate purple, blue and pink clusters of four-petaled blossoms. The colors vary from cluster to cluster, with some shifting color slightly within the cluster. The blue-purple tanzanite/lavender color is my favorite.
A painting in progress of the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy integrated flight test #4 and humanity’s first live video of plasma during reentry. A multicolor wash over the piece has been sprinkled with salt on the right side. The spaceship has been lightly outlined, which will later be inked in and more decorative details added. There will be… METALLICS. That is all.
FIRST FLIGHT by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of the CFT-1 launch and inaugural test (should we call it only test? Too soon?) of the Boeing Starliner spacecraft, carrying two astronauts to the International Space Station on an Atlas rocket. The rocket rises past wispy clouds on the left side, with a view of the ISS in space in the top right corner. The blue sky fades to a mottled blue-purple color on the right, representing the depths of space.
The author stands looking off to the left, holding a tall flagpole in her left hand, with a large black and white pirate flag blowing away towards the right. She looks and feels extremely epic. The flag features a skull in a fedora-style hat, with crossed rock pick and shovel below. She is wearing the same design on a black tshirt, with dusty jeans, hiking boots, and a sun hat, because the Central Oregon sun was beating us up, and the 0% humidity* sucks the juice from your body (*okay realistically greater than 0% but seriously, SO DRY. I literally couldn’t hydrate enough no matter what I did.) She stands among clumps of sagebrush against a light blue sky with wispy streaks of cloud.
A group of larger Oregon sunstones, most showing deep red color with champagne-clear rims, lit from a low angle by the morning sun. These are what the mining people call “juicies”.
SEEING SPOTS by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting on a square block of an abstract red-orange background with light and dark areas in a chaotic pattern. Spreading across the bottom half are a series of dark sunspots expanding across the surface.
DUN BRISTE SEA STACK by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of a complex layered rock stack in the northern Irish Sea. The formation resembles a densely layered slice of cake with grassy green “icing”. The layers are light and dark, with pockets of vegetation along the cliff face and top of the stack. The sea is a cool blue with waves crashing against the base of the stack.
BATTLE OF YAVIN by Danielle Rose Baker. An ink and watercolor illustration of an X-wing fighter from the Star Wars universe against a starry sky rendered in purples and blues. The Death Star looms in the background and the fighter is flying away from it, towards the viewer.
KING TIDE AT NEPTUNE A watercolor painting of the ocean during a king tide, an extreme tidal event at the Oregon Coast. The waves foam up against black rounded cobbles on the beach, with large white waves cresting and crashing further from shore, with large sprays shooting up against the horizon. The water is faintly blue-green and the skies are muted grays.
A photo of beach sand with a small stream crossing it diagonally from lower left to upper right, forming complex patterns of light and dark sand across the lower two-thirds of the scene. The main water channel forms ripple-like patterns, with longer braided patterns of light and dark across the shallow slower-moving part of the stream. The stream’s edge is crisply defined by a shallow cliff of sand, uniformly tan-colored above the flowing water.
BATTLE OF YAVIN by Danielle Rose Baker. An ink and watercolor illustration of an X-wing fighter from the Star Wars universe against a starry sky rendered in purples and blues. The Death Star looms in the background and the fighter is flying away from it, towards the viewer.
MINERAL MOON by Danielle Rose Baker. A square watercolor painting, featuring a close up of the lunar surface with craters and seas in greens, purples, blues and oranges. This enhanced color image shows subtle differences in chemical composition and geology, highlighting subsequent volcanic flows and mineral concentrations that might otherwise evade the eye.
DIANA PIERCES THE AZURE SKY by Danielle Rose Baker. An ink illustration of a Saturn V rocket and launch tower during the launch of Apollo IV. The top two-thirds is a roiling sky of clouds rendered in blue, dark teal and navy inks, some with shimmering effects. Outlined against this, the launch tower is seen in shades of brown-orange. The rocket is bathed in warm light and yellow-tinged exhaust expands below, with dark shapes outlining the base of the launch pad.
Just a wee pointillism space shuttle, soaring through the air, from high school.
ST. NECTAN’S GLEN by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of a tall waterfall cascading down verdant green cliffs, pooling halfway down and passing through a rock arch before hitting the bottom pool. The entire piece is predominantly green, with ferns and plants suggested in the top left and lower right sections.
ORION ILLUMINATED by Danielle Rose Baker. A pearlescent watercolor painting on black of the star-forming regions in the Orion Nebula, as seen by the NIRCam instrument of the James Webb Space Telescope on September 11, 2022. The image shows the Orion Bar, a dense wall of dust and gas containing a bright star, θ2 Orionis A. Complex structures are revealed in wavelengths of infrared radiation from ionized and molecular gases, dust, and scattered starlight.
A 40 oz black tumbler engraved to expose rainbow stainless steel underneath. Main text reads “My favorite rock is…” with approximately 160 different rock and mineral terms in a much smaller font surrounding the main text. The words wrap fully around the tumbler and it is in fact GLORIOUS. This one was the prototype and has a few spacing issues, therefore it became mine.
ICE CLIFFS OF PLUTO by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of ice cliffs on the surface of Pluto as imaged by the New Horizons spacecraft in 2025, seen in rusty oranges, browns, and cool grays.
A map of JRR Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, showing locations from the Gray Havens in the west to Mordor in the East.
A watercolor painting of a golden-to-blue labradorite heart, with a sticker lying across the bottom that has a small version of the heart with “I” and “rocks” in script on either side in black.
UBEHEBE CRATER by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of Ubehebe Crater at Death Valley National Park. An explosive volcanic crater dusted with snow against an overcast sky. The crater wall has many layers, in shades of brown, tan and orange. The foreground is darker brown, with lighter splotches of snow.
Wizard Island and Crater Lake from an overlook, Crater Lake National Park, October 2024.
A watercolor labradorite heart, crossed by dark fractures against a blue-to-gold background.
A watercolor painting in progress of a rainbow-y labradorite heart, dark fractures crossing the blue and gold reflected depths. A paintbrush rests on the watercolor block. It’s slow-going and I don’t feel like I’m getting it right, but it’s probably better than I think.
DUST OF OSIRIS by Danielle Rose Baker. A painting of the top-down view of the opened sample return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission to asteroid Bennu. Circular sections and hexagonal bolts are seen among the rocky material in the middle ring, framed by lotus flower motifs and patterned circles with geometric ink designs drawn in an ancient Egyptian style with gold accents. A ring of painted turquoise, lapis and carnelian rectangles accented with gold surrounds the inkwork. Inspired by the decorative motifs of Tutankhamen’s treasures, and the Art Deco-tinged Egyptian Revival movement that arose from the discovery of said treasures.
SPACE SHUTTLE ATLANTIS AT KSCVC by Danielle Rose Baker. A watercolor painting of shuttle Atlantis as seen on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center, with a projected background of the earth as seen from orbit, with ribbons of aurorae dancing across the atmosphere. The orbiter is displayed with payload bay doors open, and the Canadarm robotic utility arm extended above the walkway.