mission:60s featured guest

I was born and raised in Glasgow, Scotland. As a very young child, I was enthralled watching
the Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon. That was the foundation of a lifelong fascination for
those missions.

Ever since I could hold a pencil, I have liked to draw. I’ve always liked to be creative, and fine art
graphite pencil on paper is my favorite medium.

I am fascinated by the equipment built for the Apollo missions, and really concentrating on the
textures is my way of getting up close and touching them. I feel very strongly about getting the
historical details right, so that the story being told in my art is accurate. As an artist, I’m
interested in the human side of the early missions, and also, the engineering of the machines
and equipment. I like the complexity of the launch towers, the spacesuits and the rocket engines
and think that they can be looked at as pieces of art in themselves. I try to capture the texture of
the materials used to build them in my drawings and I hope that anyone that sees my art will
somehow feel that they have touched them too.
For the past 40 years, I've worked as a visual effects artist for the movie and TV industry in both
London, U.K., and Los Angeles.

I’m an artist member of the International Association of Astronomical Artists (IAAA) and the
British Interplanetary Society (BIS).

With my art, I hope to help preserve the stories of the most amazing chapter of human
exploration, ingenuity and achievement. One of my lifelong regrets is that I wasn’t able to attend
a Saturn V launch, but I feel lucky to have witnessed the missions as they happened, and I'm
looking forward to the next generation of exploration. - Doug Forrest