How to Draw the Solar System Project
- 1). Lightly draw a line guide for your picture. This can be done easily, and gives you a frame to work the rest of your picture around. Draw a long, straight vertical line, tilted at roughly ten degrees to the right. Draw a curved, horizontal line, starting from the left of your vertical line, with two thirds of it to the right of the line. The downward curved line should bisect your vertical line around a third of the way up, and the right end should be slightly higher than the left.
- 2). Draw a second curved line from the end point of the first one. This should be tilted upwards at a similar angle to the first, but still have a bowl-like curve in it. On these two curved lines, you should draw eight bisecting, near-vertical lines. The first four should occupy the last third of the first curve, and the remaining four should be slightly larger, and spread out across the second curve. The first vertical line should be tiny in comparison with the original, large one, and the next two should be nearly twice as large. The fourth vertical line should sit on the point created by the two curved lines, and be slightly smaller than the previous two, although not as small as the first. The fifth line should be the largest of the eight smaller lines, but (to be accurate) around a tenth of the size of the original, long line. The sixth line should be slightly smaller than the fifth, and the final two should be around half of the size of the sixth.
- 3). Draw a large circle to represent the sun. The sun contains 99.8% of the mass in our solar system. That should give you a good indication of quite how large the sun is. Draw the sun using your original vertical line (the furthest to the left) as a guide. The tips of the line should touch the circle, and the end of the curved line (to the left) should meet up with the left edge of the circle. Make sure the right hand side doesn't encroach on the space for the tiny vertical line on the right.
- 4). Draw circles around the remainder of the vertical lines, using your lines as a guide for the size. These are the eight planets in the solar system -- Mercury (closest to the sun), Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus. There is an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which you can draw in if you wish. Use tiny, oddly-shaped fragments to represent asteroids.
- 5). Color your picture in. See Resources for a diagram containing the colors of the planets. Add in other details, such as the visible rings that surround Saturn, as you desire.
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